Experts warn of the impact when private-equity firms buy companies that serve children with autism

you'd never know JJ Bautista only started speaking at the age of five that half this half these days he's got a million questions put the camera this way can I use it in the can I use it but when he started asking his mom Misty Rashard every day about bad weather terrified it might storm her intuition told her something was wrong just got progressively worse at the point where we were at a friend's house it started raining and he wouldn't get in the car I literally had to pick him up and put him

in the car cuz he was scared of death he was scared of the rain right scare the WEA JJ's on the autism spectrum and in 2017 his mother enrolled him at a private Therapy Clinic near their home in Baton Rouge at first happy with JJ's progress at card the Center for Autism and Related Disorders but after the chain of clinics was acquired by a prestigious private Equity Firm Blackstone in 2018 she said she became worried about some of the Staffing changes she saw they had a lot of turnover of peopl

e at the her concerns coming to a head in June 2022 when JJ melted down at the clinic after repeatedly asking for details which Rashard says the clinic only reluctantly provided she was shown a video of her son in a therapy session and a staffer flipping the lights on and off apparently to mimic lightning her son she says visibly upset and so watch my child go from the screen door to the window to the screen door to the window won't come outside on the porch won't leave the house if it's even dr

izzling pissed me off to no end and you basically tortured my special needs kid this is emotional for you it makes me so mad so they framed it as a therapy lesson right do you believe it was that's that was not a therapy lesson you're supposed to be like medical professionals and you tortured my son and you laughed about it Blackstone in a statement to NBC News denied its ownership of card had anything to do with JJ's harrowing experience saying the firm could not comment on a particular client

but said the firm was never involved in determining the appropriate course of treatment for patients Blackstone also says the company significantly increased clinical training under its ownership two employees disputed this and provided a document showing training time cut roughly in half between 2016 2 years before blackstone's takeover and 2020 about one in every 36 kids is diagnosed with autism in the United States treatment covered by Medicaid and private insurers in all 50 states and now se

rvices to help those kids with autism have become big business generating an estimated $7 billion a year in Revenue private Equity flooding The Zone with those firms behind 85% of company buyouts between 2017 and 2022 when private Equity takes over a company it's like if the mob moved into your neighborhood that's what it feels like uh that the mob has taken over uh our profession it hurts my heart John Bailey runs an Ethics Hotline for ABA therapy applied Behavior Analysis often used to treat a

utism he says he hears time and again these private Equity firms are putting profits over patience I'm worried about what's going to happen down the road as the private Equity erodes our value systems card ended up filing bankruptcy in May Blackstone says the company's Financial issues were the result of well-documented industrywide challenges stemming from impacts of the pandemic and its aftershocks and insufficient reimbursements from insurers it was incredibly devastating Dorian Gren piche fo

unded card in 1990 and spent the next 25 years building it into the largest autism service provider in the country she's the one who sold to Blackstone in 2018 but left her board seat after 4 years frustrated she says with Management's decisions to add expensive Executives and thirdparty contracts now she's back in charge after purchasing most of the company's operations last summer and pledging to rebuild hiring 250 new staffers in training and opening up clinics to new patients helping childre

n on families with autism is my entire life I started working in this field when I was 16 years old and I could not walk away seeing that there's still a lot to be done um I could not just retire knowing that all the amazing things that we built at card uh could have disappeared or gone away Blackstone tells NBC returning card to its founder was the right thing to do so she could keep its existing center-based facilities open for patients as for JJ now 9 years old he's receiving treatment at a n

ew facility his mom filed a complaint with the Louisiana Behavior Analysis board and in February the card staffer involved in the light switch incident was disciplined for ignoring a client's demand to stop an action that was agitating and provoking the client the anger for JJ's mom still raw so you believe that they were motivated by profit of course yes because you're obviously not interested in helping kids they don't care about anyone but their pocketbook across the healthcare industry indep

endent research shows patient care can decline after private Equity firms Buy in at hospitals one study found more patient falls and infections after the facilities were acquired by private Equity firms and at nursing homes owned by these kinds of places a 10% higher mortality rate according to other research thanks for watching stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or follow us on social media