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Alpaz Wellness founder describes lengthy licensing process, regulatory hurdles and millions in startup losses
Summary
Sean Smith, founder and CEO of Alpaz Wellness, told the Southern Maryland delegation that state and federal licensing timelines and requirements left his La Plata treatment center with high carry costs; he described long Certificate of Need and DEA certification delays and reported more than $7 million in losses over six months.
Sean Smith, founder and CEO of Alpaz Wellness in La Plata, told the Southern Maryland delegation that regulatory timelines and sequencing in Maryland created months of delay that left his inpatient treatment center carrying substantial staffing and operating costs before it could treat patients.
Smith said Alpaz is a 108‑bed, licensed residential treatment center on a roughly 70,000‑square‑foot site that opened in 2024. He told the delegation the center currently operates three units and has a patient census a little north of 40, employs roughly 30 staff and treated about 350 patients in 2024. Smith said he expects the facility to treat as many as 1,215 patients per year once it stabilizes.
Smith described the path providers face in Maryland: a certificate of need (CON) application submitted in March 2022 was granted in June 2023; licensing and other approvals then required staffing the units before the facility could open, which produced a "burn rate" Smith estimated at roughly $1 million per month while the facility was staffed but constrained from delivering revenue‑generating services. He said there was a five‑week delay in receiving the hard copy of licensure, and later complications in obtaining a DEA authorization he described as a "224 cert," a federal authorization that remained unresolved as of the meeting. Smith said the unresolved DEA matter and other licensing issues cost his business an estimated more than $7 million over roughly six months.
On the clinical side, Smith said Alpaz provides detoxification (a level below acute hospital care) and residential care, including medication‑assisted therapies, DBT and CPT core curricula, and technology‑enabled monitoring such as biometric rings. He said Alpaz is in‑network with TRICARE and CareFirst and is developing a veterans‑specific program on its third floor. "We are out here saving lives," Smith said.
Smith asked delegates to note the regulatory experience so that future providers may face fewer barriers, saying, "I don't think it should take 26 months to open a treatment center in the state of Maryland." Delegation Chair Delegate Edith Patterson and other members offered to arrange follow‑up meetings to discuss state and federal avenues to assist providers and to share Smith's operational data with legislators.
Ending: Delegates encouraged Alpaz to arrange a private meeting with members of the delegation to present detailed timelines and documentation; no formal action was taken at the meeting.
