CompCare Sells Its Brea Flagship for $12 Million : Debt: Struggling chain of drug and psychiatric treatment centers will use the income from the sale to pay some of the $41 million it owes to banks.

Comprehensive Care Corp. said Monday that it has agreed to sell Brea Hospital Neuropsychiatric Center, once its flagship facility, for $12 million to Community Psychiatric Centers of Laguna Hills.

The Brea facility includes a newly constructed 152-bed acute psychiatric hospital that is scheduled to open within a week and an existing hospital, which is outmoded and will be demolished within three months.

CompCare, a financially struggling chain of chemical dependency and psychiatric treatment facilities which lost $20.6 million in its last quarter, is selling the facility to pay down $41 million in bank debt, said Alan C. Henderson, the company’s chief financial officer.

The company, which last year restructured and moved its headquarters from Irvine to St. Louis, plans to sell two more facilities--two chemical dependency treatment facilities in San Diego and St. Louis, both of which have ceased operating. Also, CompCare said Monday it has signed an agreement to sell 5.3 acres of land in Miami for $960,000.

After the sale of Brea Hospital, CompCare will have three locations remaining in Orange County: Starting Point of Orange County in Costa Mesa and CareUnit of Orange, both chemical dependency treatment centers; and Tustin Manor, a Tustin long-term nursing home.

Brea Hospital was once a big money-maker for CompCare and considered the company’s finest facility, said David Langness, vice president of communications for the Hospital Council of Southern California and former CompCare spokesman.

But he said in the late 1980s that several factors, including increased competition from other mental-health care providers and the “managed care revolution,” caused the patient census to drop and that the hospital started losing money.

The hospital also had suffered from publicity associated with lawsuits filed several years ago by former employees that alleged that cost-cutting was responsible for one unattended patient’s death from a drug overdose and an attempted suicide. CompCare denies the charges and has defended the quality of patient care provided at the Brea facility.

While only 45 beds are now filled in the old 100-bed building, the new facility is expected to attract more patients, said Barry Dyches, senior vice president of Community Psychiatric Centers.

Community Psychiatric has been co-managing the Brea facility for a month. When the sale closes, the hospital will be renamed CPC Brea Canyon Hospital.

Dyches said the new hospital will offer all semiprivate rooms as well as added specialized treatment programs and extensive outdoor recreation, including a softball field and volleyball and tennis courts.

Also, hospital occupancy is expected to benefit from Community Psychiatric’s ability to acquire contracts with managed health-care providers, said Todd Smith, administrator of the Brea hospital. Managed care organizations in Southern California are attracted to Community Psychiatric, Smith said, because of its extensive network of facilities here and its development of outpatient treatment.

Increasingly mental health insurance benefits are being administered through managed health-care organizations that seek to contain costs by limiting hospitalization and encouraging the use of outpatient treatment.

The Brea hospital will be the 50th in Community Psychiatric’s network and its third in Orange County, where it also operates hospitals in Laguna Hills and Santa Ana.