Behavioral Health Feasibility Study in Florida

Second in the nation, ordinary in its gauges

Florida is the second busiest state for SBA lending to behavioral health and addiction treatment providers, ranking 2 of 52 with 99 approvals worth $86.0 million over FY2017 to FY2026. That 1.13x location quotient places the class slightly above its national share of SBA lending, though within Florida it ranks only 21 of 39 classes. Loan size matches the nation exactly, with a median of $300,000 at 1.00x the national class median. Neither the median nor the cancellation and charge-off rates are flagged against Florida lending overall or the class nationally, so this page is about the shape of the record rather than one outlier.

That shape is wide. Half the Florida treatment loans fall between $50,000 and $1.2 million, spanning an outpatient office fit-out at one end and a residential treatment property at the other. SBA 7(a) carried 80 approvals and SBA 504, which finances fixed assets, carried 19. Florida Business Development Corporation is current holder of 11 Florida treatment loans under 504, worth $22.0 million, and Florida First Capital Finance Corporation, Inc. 7 worth $5.9 million. TD Bank, National Association, the busiest Florida 7(a) holder here, has 19 for $1.8 million and Wells Fargo Bank National Association 8 for only $120,000, while Newtek Small Business Finance, LLC holds just 6 worth $10.3 million. Franchises are 5.1% of the count.

Late losses and failed closings

The loss record has an unusual timing. Among 42 Florida treatment loans paid out to borrowers in FY2017 to FY2021, the write-off floor stands at 7.1%, yet the five-year figure is 0.00%, so every loss in that group arrived after the fifth year. Both are floors. A clean early record should not be read as proof of a durable one. Cancellation is the other caution: 11.5% of Florida treatment approvals in FY2017 through FY2024 never went ahead, rising to 14.1% when Florida loans never disbursed are added to the cancelled count.

What a Florida treatment study must test

Loans are concentrated in the southeast: Palm Beach County holds 28 approvals, Miami-Dade 19 and Broward 18, with Hillsborough next at 5. Before anything else, the Florida study must show referral sources and payer contracts in hand, not only population need, and has to model census by level of care. The budget has to carry licensing, accreditation and staffing ratios before the first patient arrives. Run the coverage ratio on collected revenue after denials, at a census the operator can document, with a stress case for a payer leaving the network. An appraisal of a treatment property should give its value for an alternative use as well as its value as a licensed facility. Every Florida figure here carries one limit: mental health care and addiction treatment are filed under the same pair of industry codes, so SBA's files cannot tell the two apart. Approvals swung from 3 in FY2022 to 16 in FY2026.