What a crisis costs: San Diego's behavioral health rates, one table

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or call San Diego County's Access & Crisis Line at (888) 724-7240, available 24/7.

Every level of behavioral health care in California's Medi-Cal system has a published price. The state's fee schedules are public, county-specific, and updated annually — which means the economics of San Diego's care continuum are not a matter of opinion. Here is the county's FY 2026-27 price list for the levels of care this series has been discussing.

The rate table (San Diego County, effective July 1, 2026)

Source: DHCS SMHS Psychiatric Hospital, 24-Hour, and Day Services rate files and DMC-ODS Partial Hospitalization rate file, FY 2026-27, San Diego County rows (county code 37).

The arithmetic

One hospital day buys three days of intensive day treatment. $2,624.70 ÷ $830.94 = 3.2. The system can treat someone at the most intensive non-hospital level for three days — most of the day in structured programming, nights at home — for the price of one hospital bed-day. At day rehabilitation intensity, the same dollar goes 6.9 days ($2,624.70 ÷ $379.63).

A single 8-hour crisis stabilization episode costs $3,139.44. $392.43 × 8 = $3,139.44 — more than a hospital day. Crisis stabilization earns that price by diverting 84% of its clients from hospital admission (BHS, FY 2024-25). But it is a 24-hour-maximum service: an expensive, effective front door that still needs somewhere to send people.

Waiting is almost as expensive as treating. The administrative day rate — what Medi-Cal pays when someone no longer needs a hospital bed but occupies one because no lower level of care has an opening — is $894.62. A patient stuck ten administrative days awaiting placement costs $8,946.20 to go nowhere, more than what 23 full days of day rehabilitation ($8,731.49) would have cost to actually treat them.

A readmission cycle vs. a step-down month, priced. A five-day rehospitalization — the fate of 27% of hospitalized clients within the year (part 2) — bills $13,123.50 (5 × $2,624.70). A full month of intensive day treatment (20 program days × $830.94) bills $16,618.80; a month of full-day day rehabilitation, $7,592.60. The step-down month costs about the same as, or less than, the relapse it exists to prevent — before counting the second hospitalization's ripple costs (ED, transport, administrative days) or the human ones.

Why this table matters now

Until 2026, most of the middle rows of this table described capacity San Diego's adult Medi-Cal system didn't have (part 1). The 35 PHP/IOP slots awarded under RFSQ 12892 put the day-treatment rates into actual use for adults. The fee schedule means the county, the state, and the public can now watch — in dollars — whether buying the middle of the continuum reduces spending at the top of it. This page will track those rates annually.