Action on Addiction

Located in Bakersfield, CA, Action on Addiction operates in CA's broader addiction-treatment market. The facility offers specific levels of care: PHP, Dual Dx. What this page tries to do is frame the specific questions worth asking, which are rarely the ones that get asked first.

Care levels at Action on Addiction

What Action on Addiction offers: The facility's documented care levels are The facility offers specific levels of care: PHP, Dual Dx. — each of which is appropriate for specific clinical presentations. Matching the level to the specific clinical need is the pre-admission work. What matters is whether that matches the specific clinical picture, which only a proper assessment can tell. Most mismatches happen when the assessment is skipped or done inside the facility with a commercial interest in admission.

Insurance and payment

Action on Addiction operates primarily on commercial insurance. The implication for patients: higher typical cost-share, potentially more intensive programming, and the full burden of MHPAEA parity-rule dynamics — including appeal rights when the plan denies. Most post-treatment billing disputes trace back to a specific moment when an admissions counselor said one thing and the benefits department later documented something else. Avoid the moment by getting the written VOB before admission, not after.

Specialty programming

The facility's documented specialty programming includes: Veterans, Members of military families, Criminal justice (other than DUI/DWI)/Forensic clients. The gap between specialty-branding and specialty-programming is where a lot of families end up disappointed. Specific questions — who, how many hours, what credentials — close the gap before admission.

Before you call

Questions that matter before admitting to Action on Addiction: ASAM level of care (not the facility's category, the clinical level); written VOB; MAT policy. If the clinical situation involves opioid use disorder, confirm explicitly whether Action on Addiction offers medication-assisted treatment — buprenorphine, methadone, or naltrexone. Programs that do not are operating outside the current standard of care. The ones who answer those quickly are usually the ones worth considering. The ones who dodge are almost always worth skipping.