Parents sue SF drug treatment provider after son’s overdose

A San Francisco family is suing HealthRIGHT 360 — one of the city’s largest addiction treatment providers — for failing to prevent their son’s death. He overdosed while in their care, and staff allegedly ignored signs he was in danger.

The facts

The family of Justin Cartwright is suing HealthRight 360, a nonprofit that operates the vast majority of San Francisco’s publicly funded rehab beds. Cartwright fatally overdosed inside HealthRight 360’s detox center in January 2024. According to the lawsuit, his mother was not informed of his death — instead, she noticed her son’s location was at the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s office via her iPhone’s “Find my Friends.”

Cartwright is one of five people who died of overdoses in HealthRight’s facilities in just over a year, including four clients and one staff member, according to the Chronicle.

The Context

HealthRight 360 received $65 million from the City last year and operates about 75% of its publicly funded drug treatment spots. It focuses on the “harm reduction” model of drug treatment. A report in the Standard in 2024 found that HealthRight 360 had mismanaged its finances, paid a City employee over $100,000, and racked up millions of dollars of debt with Medi-Cal.

In a 2024 investigation, the California Department of Health Care Services found that HealthRight “failed to adhere to its Hourly Safety Checks policies and procedures.”

Geno Sargent died in the same facility just weeks after Cartwright’s overdose, and a Chronicle investigation published in December 2024 detailed rampant drug use, untrained staff, and a lack of mental health services inside HealthRight’s treatment programs. Many clients described the programs as chaotic, unsafe, and ineffective. Some said they were rarely drug tested.

The GrowSF Take

San Francisco spends a lot on behavioral health services — but spending alone isn’t the same as results. We need real accountability for how this money is used. When someone dies in a treatment program, we should ask hard questions about protocols, training, and emergency response. The City must fundamentally rethink how it awards grants to nonprofits - we need to clearly define outcomes to measure and hold them accountable when they fail to deliver.