PHP-level care for Fort Lauderdale — inpatient density, your home at night.

RECO sits 26 miles north of Fort Lauderdale on I-95 — a clean 40-minute commute from Las Olas, Victoria Park, or Coral Ridge. That distance matters clinically: it puts genuine geographic space between a client's daily PHP work and the apartment, bar, or block tied to active use, without forcing relocation. Clients keep their housing, their family, and their evening routines, and step into 30+ hours of structured clinical care during the day.

The drive from Las Olas to RECO’s Delray Beach campus runs about 40 minutes north on I-95 — close enough that families in Victoria Park, Coral Ridge, or Rio Vista can build a Partial Hospitalization Program around the realities of life in Fort Lauderdale, far enough that the daily clinical environment sits at a meaningful remove from the people, places, and routines tied to active addiction. That geographic separation is not incidental. For someone stepping down from residential, or stepping up from an IOP that wasn’t holding, the half-hour buffer between home and treatment functions as a kind of clinical airlock. Mornings begin in the car heading north; evenings end back in Broward, with the people who matter, in the bed they sleep in.

PHP at RECO is built for adults who need the clinical density of inpatient but do not require 24-hour medical monitoring — and whose overnight environment, whether a family home in Wilton Manors or a vetted sober-living residence, is stable enough to support that arrangement. The program runs Monday through Friday, 30+ hours per week, and is staffed by the same psychiatric, medical, and clinical team that delivers RECO’s residential care.

What partial hospitalization actually provides

A Partial Hospitalization Program is the most intensive level of outpatient care defined by ASAM. In practical terms, it means at least six clinical hours per day, five days per week — a schedule that mirrors a full-time job. The day includes psychiatric evaluation and medication management, individual therapy with a primary clinician, and evidence-based group programming that draws on CBT, DBT, Motivational Interviewing, and, where indicated, Trauma-Focused CBT or EMDR.

For appropriately selected clients, the research base on PHP outcomes is consistent: when housing is stable and the clinical match is right, PHP delivers results comparable to residential treatment. The mechanism is straightforward — the clinical hours are nearly identical. What changes is the overnight environment, not the daytime intervention.

Medication-assisted treatment is integrated rather than siloed. Clients with alcohol use disorder may be evaluated for naltrexone (oral or Vivitrol injection) or acamprosate. Clients with opioid use disorder are evaluated for buprenorphine or extended-release naltrexone. The psychiatric team prescribes and adjusts in-house, so medication decisions happen in the same building as the therapy that surrounds them.

Who steps down into PHP

The most common pathway into PHP is a step-down from residential treatment after roughly three to four weeks. Residential gets a client medically stable and detached from the immediate environment of use; PHP carries the clinical work forward at near-residential intensity while reintroducing the structure of daily life outside a 24-hour facility.

A second pathway is a step-up from IOP. Sometimes nine to twelve clinical hours per week is not enough — early sobriety becomes shaky, mood symptoms surface, or the recovery environment outside treatment is not yet doing the work it needs to do. Moving from IOP to PHP triples the weekly clinical contact without requiring inpatient admission.

A third group enters PHP directly from the community. These are typically adults whose clinical intake — guided by the six ASAM dimensions, including withdrawal risk, biomedical conditions, emotional and behavioral conditions, readiness to change, relapse potential, and recovery environment — indicates that IOP is too thin but full inpatient is not required. A Fort Lauderdale professional who can keep working evenings and weekends, has stable housing, and is medically uncomplicated often fits this profile.

What the evidence base looks like

PHP for substance use disorders is one of the better-studied levels of care. The research consistently finds outcomes for appropriately selected patients comparable to inpatient treatment on measures of abstinence, treatment retention, and psychosocial functioning at six and twelve months. The key moderating variable in every credible study is the recovery environment outside clinical hours.

This is why intake matters more than the program brochure. A client returning each night to a household where alcohol or other substances are present, or to an unstable living situation, is a different clinical case than a client returning to a supportive family in Coral Ridge or to a structured sober-living residence near campus. When the overnight environment supports recovery, PHP delivers inpatient-level results without inpatient cost, employment disruption, or family separation. When it doesn’t, the honest clinical answer is usually residential first, then PHP as the step-down.

What a PHP day looks like at RECO

Mornings begin with a process or psychoeducation group — depending on the day, this may be a CBT-anchored relapse-prevention group, a DBT skills group focused on distress tolerance and emotion regulation, or a trauma-informed group for clients with co-occurring PTSD. Midday is a shared meal on campus; the clinical staff treat this as part of the program, not a break from it. Eating together is itself a recovery skill for many clients who have spent years isolated around use.

Afternoons include experiential and process work — small-group therapy, expressive modalities, and, woven throughout, individual sessions with the primary clinician. Psychiatry appointments are scheduled within the day rather than asking clients to leave and come back. By late afternoon, the day closes with a check-out group and the commute back to Fort Lauderdale.

The structure is intentional. PHP is not a collection of scattered appointments; it is a coherent daily rhythm engineered to produce clinical density. That density is what makes a 30+ hour week meaningfully different from a 9-hour IOP week.

Getting started from Fort Lauderdale: insurance, intake, and what comes next

RECO is in-network with most major commercial carriers serving South Florida — typically including Aetna, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and several regional plans. The admissions team can run a benefits verification in roughly fifteen minutes and tell a family in plain language what PHP will cost, what is covered, and what days and hours are authorized.

For Fort Lauderdale callers, intake is generally scheduled within 24 to 72 hours of the first call. Whether the presenting concern is alcohol — see our alcohol-specific care page — or opioids, including the path covered on our heroin treatment page, the clinical assessment uses the same ASAM framework to determine whether PHP is the right starting point. When PHP completes, clients typically step down to IOP, then to aftercare and alumni programming, with the same primary clinician carrying forward across levels where possible. To begin, call (866) 396-2008.

Serving residents of: Las Olas, Victoria Park, Coral Ridge, Rio Vista, Wilton Manors.