Final yr was powerful for Acadia Healthcare, one of many nation’s largest suppliers of psychological well being providers.
A slew of federal companies opened investigations into whether or not Acadia illegally held sufferers towards their will in its psychiatric hospitals, as described in a New York Instances investigation in September. The federal inquiries rattled buyers, inflicting Acadia’s inventory to plummet.
However Acadia’s troubles have been a boon to the corporate’s chief govt, Christopher Hunter. Its board of administrators awarded him a $1.8 million bonus to assist reply to “unprecedented governmental inquiries,” in accordance with a monetary submitting this month. The bonus comes on high of his common compensation, which totaled greater than $7 million in 2024.
Acadia’s chief monetary officer and common counsel have been additionally granted bonuses of about $1 million, and the chief working officer was promised $600,000. Acadia stated the bonuses, which can be paid in March of subsequent yr, have been awarded to make sure that the leaders didn’t go away earlier than the investigations have been accomplished.
The corporate’s board determined that maintaining its management crew was “in the most effective long-term curiosity of the corporate and the sufferers and communities it serves,” stated Tim Blair, a spokesman for Acadia. “The corporate follows a pay-for-performance philosophy, utilizing peer market knowledge for benchmarking and calibration,” he added.
The Instances reported that Acadia was holding sufferers towards their will as a way to maximize insurance coverage payouts. Some sufferers arrived at emergency rooms looking for routine psychological well being care however have been despatched to Acadia amenities, the place they have been locked inside and remoted from their households. The practices started earlier than Mr. Hunter turned chief govt, in April 2022, however continued below his watch, The Instances discovered.
The corporate has forcefully denied any misconduct and stated it could cooperate with the investigations. “The allegation that Acadia systematically holds sufferers longer than medically essential is fake and goes straight towards every thing we do and stand for in terms of affected person care,” Mr. Hunter instructed buyers in October.
After the article was printed, Acadia instructed buyers that a number of authorities companies, together with the Justice Division and the Securities and Alternate Fee, had begun investigations. In October, executives disclosed that admissions to their amenities weren’t as excessive as anticipated. That very same month, shareholders introduced a class-action lawsuit towards the corporate, arguing that Acadia hid its practices from buyers.
The Instances additionally discovered issues in different components of Acadia’s companies, together with its methadone clinics, which have been billing the federal government for providers, like counseling, that it didn’t present. And insufficient staffing led to a sequence of tragedies at one of many firm’s prized ladies’s amenities, The Instances reported Tuesday.
Since September, the corporate has misplaced roughly $5 billion of its market worth and is now price about $2 billion.
Like many chief executives, Mr. Hunter’s compensation is tied partly to Acadia’s share worth. In 2024, the corporate’s falling inventory led him to overlook his efficiency targets, which lowered his pay, in accordance with the April submitting.
However Sarah Anderson, an govt compensation analyst on the Institute for Coverage Research, a left-leaning suppose tank, stated that these incentives are undermined when firms like Acadia give bonuses regardless of poor efficiency.
“The entire argument of tying your compensation to the inventory value is in order that the executives will bear threat of their actions,” she stated. “That is simply going fully towards that.”