Cenpatico's parent company, St. Louis-based Centene Corp., has a growing presence in Pima County.
Other than Cenpatico, a number of other Centene subsidiaries are now operating in Tucson, including U.S. Script, the pharmacy benefit manager; Cenpatico Schools, which this year took over a Sunnyside Unified School District program for emotionally disabled students; OptiCare Vision Company; and NurseWise, which now handles the regionβs 24-hour mental-health crisis phone line, directing patients in crisis to services.
Centene also owns the only two health plans to be offered to all age groups in Pima County on the federal health care marketplace. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona will sell catastrophic plans to people under 30.
Centene has exploded in size since the 1990s, largely through securing government contracts. CEO Michael Neidorff has led Centene through 25 acquisitions since 1996, adding business lines like prison healthcare and specialty pharmacy and taking Centene from $40 million in revenue to $20 billion, according to a 2015 Fortune profile. With its $6.3 billion acquisition of Health Net earlier this year, Centene is now the country's largest Medicaid managed care organization.
For some advocates, the growing influence of a single corporation in the local behavioral health market is disconcerting.
Clarke Romans, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Southern Arizona, is concerned about the power Cenpatico has to direct business toward or away from existing Tucson providers, like Pasadera Behavioral Health Network, which announced in August it was shutting down.
"It's just like any sort of monopolistic situation," Romans said. "In the Pasadera case, Cenpatico directed business to other entities and basically squeezed Pasadera out of existence. Whether people are actually getting better care with these new entities, I think time will tell."
Romans worries about the long-term impact to Tucson's behavioral health care infrastructure if more providers close their doors.
"Certainly the struggle will be if Cenpatico leaves town next year, next decade, there won't be anything here really to fill that gap," he said. "I don't know if Centene-owned corporations would hang around if the motherlode left town."
