Answer Addiction

Tag: addiction treatment program

  • National Rating System For Addiction Treatment Being Tested In 5 States

    National Rating System For Addiction Treatment Being Tested In 5 States

    West Virginia is the latest state to announce its partnership with Shatterproof to test the rating system.

    According to the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 1 in 12 American adults—that’s 18.7 million people—had a substance use disorder. Yet only a fraction of them will get help.

    A pilot program is hoping to change that by setting a standard for quality addiction treatment.

    Five states have teamed up with the non-profit organization Shatterproof to test this new rating system—Delaware, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York and West Virginia.

    “People who need help for addiction don’t know what to look for or where to turn. Right now, there is more transparent and credible information about the quality of your next refrigerator than an addiction treatment program,” said Samantha Arsenault, Director of National Treatment Quality Initiatives at Shatterproof. “We are taking rating system best practices from healthcare and other business sectors and applying them to addiction treatment. This will not only provide critical information to individuals looking for care but also drive a long overdue transformation of the addiction treatment industry.”

    The goal of the Shatterproof Rating System is to take the currently fragmented treatment industry and make it more transparent and accessible.

    “The quality of care varies widely among addiction treatment programs, and individuals looking for care can’t identify high-quality programs,” said Gary Mendell, founder and CEO of Shatterproof. “It is time a standard be set across all of addiction treatment, and the entire system aligns behind evidence-based care.”

    Arsenault says that a majority of treatment programs in the U.S. do not offer evidence-based treatment like addiction medication. The Rating System seeks to bring this to light and encourage more access to drugs like buprenorphine within a comprehensive treatment program.

    “One concrete example of that is that we are in the wake of an opioid epidemic and yet 60% of the specialty addiction treatment programs in the U.S. don’t offer a single medication to treat opioid use disorder,” she told Government Technology.

    The Rating System will go live in 2020, according to Shatterproof’s website. All treatment facilities in the pilot states will be invited to participate by completing a Treatment Program Survey.

    West Virginia was the latest state to announce its partnership with Shatterproof to test the rating system.

    “The substance use epidemic continues to impact individuals and families across West Virginia,” said Cabinet Secretary Bill J. Crouch of the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources. “We believe the results of this pilot program will enable us to ensure effective, quality substance use disorder services are offered across the state, which in turn will benefit those who need our help to combat this problem.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Small Town Brings In Big-Thinking Addiction Specialist And Changes Everything

    Small Town Brings In Big-Thinking Addiction Specialist And Changes Everything

    Nearly 82% of rural Americans live in counties that do not have detoxification services and the town of Ashland, Wisconsin sought to change that reality.

    In a little town in Wisconsin, where the death rate from drug and alcohol abuse is almost twice as high as the state average, Dr. Mark Lim has changed the lives of those addicted and their families.

    A certified addiction specialist since 2016 (when it became a subspecialty of certification), Dr. Lim arrived in the town of Ashland as the newly hired recovery program medical director at NorthLakes Community Clinic.

    Rural communities typically lack basic resources to treat substance abuse.

    Nearly 82% of rural Americans live in counties that do not have detoxification services, a staggering number. This means anyone struggling with drug addiction has two choices – they can try to endure detox on their own (often medically unsafe), with the support of a local doctor (often hard to find in such areas) or they can relocate to begin treatment.

    A recent poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health named opioid and other drug abuse as the top health concern for rural Americans.

    The town of Ashland wanted to change this scenario. To fund an addiction treatment service program, NorthLakes applied for and won a grant from the state of Wisconsin, in addition to obtaining other federal grants intended for mental health and addiction.

    The next step was to hire a doctor to prescribe buprenorphine, known by the trade name Suboxone. Only doctors with special training are legally allowed to dole out Suboxone. Another staggering statistic on rural reality: a 2015 study found that more than 80% of US rural counties do not have even one physician able to prescribe it.

    Dr. Lim was hired and flew into Ashland with one request: He wanted to head a comprehensive program to treat addiction and not just treat it from one angle. Dr. Lim told NPR, “Opioids are big right now, but you have to work with alcohol too. You have to work with marijuana too. You have to work with methamphetamine, cocaine.”

    The addiction recovery program was built with community partners including educators, law enforcement and tribal leadership. The Ashland program includes a combination of counseling, group therapy for addiction and underlying mental health issues, as well as case management. Staff help patients with things like transportation to the clinic, daycare during therapy sessions and employment.

    John Gale of the Maine Rural Health Research Center supports this program structure, telling NPR, “That’s exactly the way it should be done. Because most people with a substance use disorder have co-occurring mental health and substance use problems. If we take care of [a patient’s] heroin problems and we don’t treat the underlying mental health and substance abuse problems, they’re going to go to go to [sic] alcohol, they’re going to do something else.”

    View the original article at thefix.com