County awaits state OK to open detox
County to issue new RFP for Weimer Road facility management
In addition to Vista Taos and Shadow Mountain — two longstanding, private substance use disorder rehabilitation operations here — Taos County is set to become home to two more substance use disorder treatment facilities, including one that will be publicly owned.
Taos County, along with Rio Arriba and San Miguel counties, had the highest rate of opioid overdose emergency room visits and overdose deaths in the state, according to the latest New Mexico Department of Health’s Substance Use Epidemiology Profile Report. Taos County is also in the top third of the state’s 33 counties for alcohol-related chronic disease and deaths. Taos County topped the list of New Mexico counties where youths report consuming alcohol, according to the report, in which “any alcohol consumption by a person under the age of 21 is considered to be excessive drinking.”
Jeff Lymburner, chief operating officer for Darrin’s Place in Española and the yet-to-be-named private drug and alcohol treatment facility planned for the shuttered Days Inn in Taos, didn’t respond to a request for comment from the Taos News. In November, he told the Taos County Commission that the facility would be open on a limited basis sometime this month. It’s not clear if that timeline has again been extended.
As Taos awaits the imminent opening of the rehabilitation facility in the former Days Inn, however, Taos County is preparing to reissue a request for proposals (RFP) to manage the detox facility on Weimer Road, which was formerly owned by the Town of Taos and operated by Tri-County Community Services. The Town of Taos transferred ownership of the Weimer property to Taos County last year, a transaction which requires approval from the state.
“Taos County is committed to providing a facility for the use of a detox center,” Taos County Manager Brent Jaramillo told the Taos News. “We are grateful for the Town of Taos for transferring the building over to Taos County. We look forward to the [New Mexico] Department of Finance and Administration approving the transfer.”
Like the facility opening in the old Days Inn, the revamped county detox center will accept Medicaid and Medicare (the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services being by far the most common insurance provider for both facilities’ prospective clients), thus offering an alternative to addiction treatment services that only accept payment out of pocket or through private insurers.
“Within the next 60 days, Taos County should be releasing a request for proposal which will provide funding for individuals qualifying for indigent services,” Jaramillo added.
Blaming a broken furnace for the 1421 Weimer Road facility’s closure in November 2015, Tri-County Community Services, which for years provided behavioral health and substance use disorder treatment services in the counties of Taos, Union and Colfax, went out of business in 2018 amid serious financial difficulties.
Rio Grande Alcoholism Treatment Program, or Rio Grande ATP, won a competitive bidding process about a year later to reopen a detox facility. The nonprofit planned to manage the thenTaos-owned facility on Weimer Road — but a confluence of politics, building issues and perhaps more significantly, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in New Mexico in March 2020, put contract negotiations on hold.
Under the terms of the original request for proposals and state law, because years passed without an actual contract being issued to Rio Grande ATP, the county must issue a new RFP in order to identify the most capable and cost-efficient entity to run its substance use disorder treatment center. Rio Grande ATP, which has offered outpatient treatment services since the 1970s in Taos County, Colfax County and San Miguel County, will submit a new bid as soon as the competitive process opens, according to Executive Director Lawrence Medina, who told the Taos News that the town repaired the broken furnace in the Weimer Road building before it began offering COVID-19 testing and vaccines there during the pandemic.
While Medina couldn’t share details of his organization’s bid, he was more than willing to talk about the need for more behavioral health services in Taos County — including Darrin’s Place at Days Inn, which Medina said he wouldn’t view as competition should Rio Grande ATP win the detox center contract with Taos County.
Medina, who has 31 years of sobriety, understands the need for support and services for those seeking to escape the pitfalls of substance use disorders, including alcoholism and stimulant and opioid disorders.
“Taos County is in the middle of a response crisis,” he said. “The crisis response is either the jail or the hospital. And our crisis response is really bad; we need to work with the law enforcement to improve part of our continuum of care or crisis response. It saves [the public] money when you have these systems in place.”
Medina said a county-owned detox facility would offer a place for individuals to safely undergo non-medical physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms from a substance after being released from medically-overseen “acute stabilization” at Holy Cross Medical Center for example, which is directly across Maestas Road from the detox center.
“Instead of sending them home, they send them to a socialsetting detox to finish the stabilization,” Medina said. “From there, it’s a point of entry to get them to outpatient or inpatient treatment, to get them in.
“And it works,” Medina added. “From the late 1970s until 2015, Taos had a social-setting detox.”