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Officials trying to reduce costs for treatment
NEW CASTLE, Pa.
Lawrence County Commissioners are trying to reduce the number of county residents on methadone maintenance treatment for drug addiction and the $1.6 million it costs annually to treat them.
On Tuesday, commissioners amended their contract with the company which handles managed care for county Medicaid recipients to provide better treatment options to overcome addiction. Medicaid is government health care for welfare and other low-income people.
Until now, the county’s Medicaid recipients on methadone maintenance programs were only required to undergo 21/2 hours of counseling type therapy per month, according to Judy Thompson, executive director of the Lawrence County Drug and Alcohol Commission.
But she said this isn’t enough to make much of a difference to an addict.
The amendment, which will be fully implemented by next March, provides for options ranging from inpatient detoxification to inpatient and outpatient treatment for addiction.
She noted, however, that the county cannot force anyone to undergo treatment for addiction.
The methadone facility, however, has some latitude in deciding what to do with a client who refuses treatment.
She said that while the costs of treatment will be higher initially than maintenance alone, the goal is ultimately to reduce the approximately $1.6 million in state funds that Lawrence County administered in 2009-10 fiscal year for methadone maintenance, which costs about $90 per week per person.
She said that 410 Lawrence County residents are on methadone treatment, with many of them traveling to other counties for the methadone.
She said the county has one of the higher rates of methadone use among the nine-county group to which Lawrence belongs and which hired a consultant to come up with this program.
Lawrence County Commissioner Steve Craig said at Tuesday’s commissioners’ meeting that the Discovery House on U.S. Route 224 in Union Township, where many county residents go for their methadone maintenance, is authorized to provide maintenance methadone to 120 addicts and is nearly at capacity, which he called “frightening.”
He said the county is mandated by the state to pay for the methadone treatment but that until now there has been “no reward for weaning yourself off methadone.”
He said that an added cost is that those in methadone treatment “are not productive members of society.”
The location of the methadone clinic in Union Township over a year ago caused some concern among residents.
Thompson said that methadone is intended to stabilize a person so that they can carry on life activities.
She said clients should not be “high” when leaving the clinic and that this would occur only if they were being given too high a dose of methadone or if they were using other drugs.
According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, methadone is a “rigorously well-tested medication that is safe and efficacious for treatment for narcotic withdrawal and dependence.”
Union Township Police Chief Joe Lombardo said that according to state law, no one who has received more than 20 milligrams of methadone should be driving a car.
He declined to comment further on the township’s experience with the clinic.