Addicts in the Bennington area will have increased access to opioid treatment thanks to a partnership announced Friday by Gov. Peter Shumlin.
The United Counseling Service and Southwestern Vermont Health Care plan to team up to provide on-site medication-assisted treatment as well as other services to recovering addicts. The center will dispense the treatment drug buprenorphine but not methadone, officials said.
The Addiction Treatment Center of Southwestern Vermont will treat individuals needing a higher level of care in Bennington County and will increase the region’s overall treatment capacity, officials said.
“The treatment center will help keep Bennington’s families healthier and its community safer,” Shumlin said.
State Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, Bennington County State’s Attorney Erica Marthage and other health care and law enforcement officials joined the governor at the Bennington police station to announce the collaboration.
“This will be a realistic treatment alternative in line with our admission that we can’t arrest our way out of this problem,” Sears said.
Medical oversight for the center will be provided through cooperation with the Hawthorne Recovery Center, headed by Dr. Nels Kloster, according to hospital CEO Thomas Dee. The plan is to co-locate the programs at the Mill building in Bennington, he said.
It will meet the needs of an underserved community, said Kloster, who is an addiction psychiatrist. Until now the closest opiate treatment centers have been an hour away, in Rutland and Brattleboro.
The new partnership will enhance existing collaborations with local law enforcement, criminal justice systems, state health care programs and other community service agencies, officials said.
Details about the center are not final but the program expects to begin accepting patients in early 2015, according to a news release from Shumlin’s office.
While individual doctors can prescribe buprenorphine to patients, the state has seven addiction treatment “hubs” around the state that specialize in addiction treatment and dispense methadone, a more heavily regulated drug.
As of September, the Rutland hub was treating 370 clients and had 74 on its wait list. The center serving Windsor and Windham counties serves 558 people with 33 on the wait list. The wait list is largest in Chittenden County, which serves 881 patients with 301 waiting.
