In Georgia two of our campuses run a partial hospitalization program: The Recovery Village Atlanta, in Roswell, at the north end of the metro area, and The Recovery Village South Atlanta, in Stockbridge, at the south end. You attend through the working day and go home at night, which makes this the most demanding level of care that leaves your evenings in your own hands.
Whether that is an advantage depends almost entirely on two things nobody asks about early enough: where you will sleep, and whether you can make the drive on a bad morning as well as a good one. This page works through both, alongside the clinical picture, the placement decision and the money. For the statewide view, start with our guide to addiction treatment across Georgia.
What a PHP involves in Georgia
Intensity is the whole definition. Strip away the acronym and a partial hospitalization program is a clinical schedule dense enough to substitute for living on site.
Where does that sit clinically? Federal guidance groups intensive outpatient and partial hospitalization programs together as a single setting on the withdrawal-management continuum, and describes that setting as appropriate for people whose withdrawal symptoms are mild to moderate [1]. Severe withdrawal is a different placement question, and it is answered by an assessment rather than by preference.
On hours, the only clearly published figure belongs to Medicare, which frames partial hospitalization as intended for people who require a minimum of 20 hours per week of therapeutic services, evidenced in their plan of care [2]. Whose rule that is matters: it is a Medicare condition of payment, not a definition every payer applies. Read it as a floor for what “intensive” means, then ask your own program what its week actually contains.
One thing this level cannot do is change the room you go home to. That limitation is not a flaw in the design; it is the trade being made, and it is why the housing section below is not an afterthought.
Recovery Village Atlanta: detox through dual diagnosis care
The Roswell campus runs medical detox, residential and inpatient care, a partial hospitalization program, dual diagnosis care for a co-occurring mental health condition, and aftercare planning.
Having that range on one site matters for a specific reason. A PHP is rarely a whole treatment episode — it usually follows something heavier or precedes something lighter — and every move between providers is a seam where people are lost. Keeping the moves internal removes a handover rather than adding a service.
Detox, where withdrawal is in the picture, sits in front of all of it and is not treatment in itself. Federal guidance says so in those words: detoxification is not substance abuse treatment and rehabilitation [3]. Our medical detox page explains what the stage does achieve.
Dual diagnosis care is worth singling out here because the overlap is large. Around 40 percent of people with a substance use disorder also had a diagnosed mental disorder in the preceding year, and only 6.8 percent of them received treatment for both conditions [5]. Whether medication forms part of a plan is decided by the assessment rather than by the level of care. As a matter of federal guidance, methadone, buprenorphine or naltrexone is the standard of care for opioid use disorder wherever it is delivered [4]; our medication assisted treatment page covers the category, and the Recovery Village Atlanta campus page describes what this site itself publishes.
A typical PHP day and week
Ask admissions for the current timetable. Campuses set their own and they change, so any schedule published on a page like this one is out of date the week after it is written.
The shape, though, is stable. Mornings start at the campus, the day is built from group work, individual therapy and case management, and you leave in the afternoon. Federal research names the approaches that fill those hours: cognitive behavioral therapy, contingency management, motivational enhancement and 12-step facilitation [4]. They are the same approaches used in residential care.
Across a week, most days are treatment days. That density is what separates this level from anything lighter, and it is why people who have done both often say a PHP feels closer to residential care than to outpatient treatment.
Two questions are worth asking before the first day rather than during the first week. How is medication handled on days you attend, and who do you call in the evening, given that the evenings belong to you rather than to the program.
If someone is having a seizure, is unresponsive or has trouble breathing, call 911. For a mental health crisis, call or text 988.
Housing while attending a day program
Settle this before a start date, not after one. A day program assumes a bed somewhere, and the program does not supply it.
Inside the north metro — Roswell, Alpharetta, Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, Marietta — home is usually the answer and the arithmetic works. From Macon, Augusta, Savannah or Columbus it does not, and saying so early saves a wasted admission.
Three arrangements cover most people. Living at home and commuting. Staying with relatives near the campus for the duration. Or supported and sober living accommodation in the area, which is arranged separately from the clinical program and is worth asking about by name.
Which of those the admissions team can help organize, and which fall to you, differs. Put the question on the first call alongside the clinical ones rather than treating it as logistics to solve later.
Be candid with the assessing clinician about what home is like. A day program built on a living situation that is driving the problem is the wrong placement, and an assessment can only work with what it is told.
PHP vs residential for Georgia residents
The clinical day looks similar in both. The other sixteen hours do not, and that gap is the decision.
Residential care fits where home is part of the problem, where the medical picture is still unsettled, or where getting to a campus five days a week is not realistic. Federal guidance puts residential programs at a few weeks to a few months, with longer stays where the clinical need is there [4].
A PHP fits where housing is stable, transport is dependable, the people at home help rather than hinder, and something — a job, a tenancy, a caring responsibility — genuinely cannot be paused. It also fits someone stepping down from a residential stay who is not ready for a light schedule.
Federal sources set these out as a sequence rather than as competing options: a short medically managed withdrawal stay, then intensive residential care, then an intensive outpatient program running two to five days a week for a few months, then standard outpatient care [5]. Our levels of care guide compares them; our inpatient rehab and outpatient rehab pages cover the levels on either side.
Where alcohol or sedative withdrawal is likely to be severe, this stops being a lifestyle question and becomes a medical one.
Coverage in Georgia: Anthem, Georgia Medicaid and self-pay
No page can tell you what a named carrier will approve for you, and one that tries is guessing. What a page can do is state the rules that apply to every policy and name the questions that settle the rest.
Start with the federal floor. Marketplace coverage must include substance use disorder treatment among the essential health benefits, cannot exclude you for a pre-existing condition, and cannot carry a yearly or lifetime dollar cap on those benefits [6].
One Georgia-specific point people get wrong: the state runs its own exchange, so Georgians enroll through Georgia Access rather than HealthCare.gov [9]. That changes where you go, not what the plans must cover.
Parity law then governs the fine print. Where a plan covers these benefits, its cost sharing and treatment limits cannot be more restrictive than the comparable medical and surgical ones, and the same test reaches prior authorization [7]. Parity has a scope worth knowing. It applies to non-federal governmental plans with more than 50 employees, to private employer group plans with more than 50 employees, and to individual-market coverage. Small-employer group plans are generally outside it, although non-grandfathered small-group and individual plans must cover mental health and substance use disorder services as an essential health benefit under the Affordable Care Act [7].
On network status the campus speaks for itself. The Recovery Village Atlanta’s own accepted-insurance section names Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Humana and United among the carriers it is in network with [10]. Participation still differs between products inside a single carrier and has to be confirmed against your own policy. Georgia Medicaid runs largely through Georgia Families, and is verified case by case rather than assumed. Where coverage is the obstacle, the state’s behavioral health department contracts with providers across all six of its regions for outpatient and residential substance abuse treatment, and the way in is a regional field office [8]. Our guides to whether insurance covers rehab and to how much rehab costs cover the arithmetic.
Transport and travel within the state
A partial hospitalization program is a commute repeated for weeks, and the commute is the part that fails first.
Roswell sits in north Fulton County, off GA-400. For the northern arc of the metro that is an ordinary weekday drive. From the south side, through the downtown connector at rush hour, it is a different proposition, and worth testing honestly before committing to it.
If you are on the south side, ask about Stockbridge instead. The Recovery Village South Atlanta is in Henry County, off I-75, and its own levels-of-care cards include a partial hospitalization program, so the south-metro and I-75-corridor drive is a separate question from the GA-400 one.
From outside the metro entirely, a daily round trip is not a plan. The realistic options are to do the residential phase here and arrange the daytime phase closer to home, or to stay near the campus while the daytime phase runs.
Raise it on the first call. Our directory of campuses shows what runs elsewhere in the family, our page on how to get into rehab covers what that call asks, and our rehab process page follows a whole episode from the first day to the last.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you run a PHP in Georgia? Yes, at two campuses. The Recovery Village Atlanta in Roswell runs a partial hospitalization program, alongside medical detox, residential and inpatient care, dual diagnosis care and aftercare planning. The Recovery Village South Atlanta in Stockbridge cards medical detox, inpatient rehab, partial hospital and aftercare on its own levels-of-care strip. Because those levels sit on one campus, stepping between them does not mean changing provider, and that seam is where people most often drop out of treatment.
How many hours a week is a PHP? Programs differ, so ask for the specific schedule rather than assuming one. The clearest published benchmark comes from Medicare, which describes partial hospitalization as intended for people who require a minimum of 20 hours per week of therapeutic services set out in their plan of care. That is Medicare’s condition of payment rather than a universal definition of the level.
Can I live at home during a PHP? Yes, and that is what defines the level. You attend through the day and sleep at home. Whether it is the right call depends on what home is like in the evenings, how reliable the drive is, and who is there. Where home is part of what is driving the problem, residential care is usually the better placement, and the assessment decides.
Does Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Georgia cover partial hospitalization? This page does not give a yes or no for a named carrier, Anthem included, because the only answer that holds is the one your own policy gives. The Recovery Village Atlanta’s own accepted-insurance section names Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Humana and United among the carriers it is in network with, but participation differs between products. Marketplace plans must in any case cover substance use disorder treatment with no dollar cap.
How is PHP different from residential treatment? The clinical days resemble each other. The nights do not. Residential care means living on site, which suits someone whose home environment is part of the problem or whose medical picture is unsettled. A partial hospitalization program hands back the evenings, which only helps when the evenings are safe. Federal sources place both on one continuum.
Sources
- Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. (2006). Detoxification and Substance Abuse Treatment, Chapter 2: Settings, Levels of Care, and Patient Placement. Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series, No. 45. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64109/
- Legal Information Institute. (2026). 42 CFR § 410.43 — Partial hospitalization services: Conditions and exclusions. Cornell Law School. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/42/410.43
- Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. (2006). Detoxification and Substance Abuse Treatment, Chapter 1: Overview, Essential Concepts, and Definitions in Detoxification. Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series, No. 45. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64119/
- National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2025). Treatment. National Institutes of Health. https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/treatment
- Office of the Surgeon General. (2016). Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health — Chapter 4: Early Intervention, Treatment, and Management of Substance Use Disorders. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK424859/
- HealthCare.gov. (2026). Mental Health and Substance Abuse Health Coverage Options. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. https://www.healthcare.gov/coverage/mental-health-substance-abuse-coverage/
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (2026). The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA). CMS. https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/private-health-insurance/mental-health-parity-addiction-equity
- Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities. (2026). Help with Substance Abuse. State of Georgia. https://dbhdd.georgia.gov/be-supported/help-substance-abuse
- Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. (2026). State Marketplaces. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. https://www.cms.gov/cciio/resources/fact-sheets-and-faqs/state-marketplaces
- The Recovery Village Atlanta. Accepted Insurance. Advanced Recovery Systems. https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/locations/atlanta/
This page is for general information and is not medical advice. Only a licensed clinician who knows your history can tell you what is right for you. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911. For free, confidential support 24/7, call or text 988.
Author
Chief Medical Officer,
The Recovery Village
