DAYTON HEALTH AGENCY HAS NEW TREATMENT FOR ADDICTS
Public Health-Dayton, Montgomery County changes approach.
With the area still in the midst of an opioid crisis, Public Health Dayton & Montgomery County is offering a first-of-its-kind, in-house medication-assisted treatment for residents seeking to recover from addiction.
The program marks a change for the department, which has typically only referred people to other programs. Medication treatments have been offered on a small scale for the last couple of months, but formally launch of the program Friday with an open house of the program’s home at Elizabeth Place.
The COR-12 program was developed by the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. It combines the traditional 12-Step recovery program with medications to support recovery, individual and group counseling, community support meetings, and case management services.
Clients can choose from different pathways to recovery, which means there’s a better chance for individual success, said Michael Dohn, medical director for the program.
“It’s a matter of saying what’s going to work for a particular individual,” he said. “For those that can use the 12-step and like that, then I think we have a complete program that uses that. If they say they don’t want to do the 12-step, then we still have a program for them.”
The combination of 12-step program and medication treatment is unique because 12-step programs have traditionally preached strict abstinence from drugs, even those
used in medication-assisted treatment.
The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation addressed the issue on their website earlier this year.
“We had to think about how the medication-assisted therapies would be perceived... We knew that some people would be cautious about the use of medications to treat opiate addiction,” said Cathy Stone, COR-12 program manager at Hazelden in St. Paul, Minn. “Our goal will always be abstinence. What we tried to help everybody understand is that the use of medication to treat somebody in their addiction is part of abstinence, just as other medications used in medical settings.”
Overdose deaths in Montgomery County dropped to 40 in July and August, and could be even lower in September and October if the preliminary numbers hold up. That marks a huge decline from May, when there were 81 deaths. Despite the recent decline, the county has had a record number of overdoses this year with at least 532 as of this week, easily surpassing last year’s total of 349.
Medications like buprenorphine or naltrexone, when part of a bigger treatment plan, can help people recovering from addiction, Dohn said.
“Recovery really involves often times an entire lifestyle change. It may involve getting into a different environment. It may involve changing your social network,” he said. The 12-step recovery program, group counseling and medication are all part of the treatment.
The program will take Medicaid or people can self pay.
Public Health has been investing in a dedicated space for the program at Elizabeth Place along with staff for the program, including a case manager and a nurse practitioner. Dohn started in January as a full-time medical director with the understanding he would get the licensing from the Drug Enforcement Administration to do medication-assisted therapy.
Dohn said it can be burdensome for primary care providers to get the training and keep up with the specific DEA regulations for medication assisted treatment.
Wright State University’s Boonshoft School of Medicine recently received a grant to help train local physicians about the specific skills to treat addiction with medication, and also help doctors get comfortable with medication as a therapy option.
Dohn said treating addiction with medication is an idea that’s being increasingly accepted by doctors in the field.
“I think people are being persuaded that it shows good treatment success and it’s being increasingly accepted across the field of addiction treatment,” he said.