Beaver County Behavioral Health looks to open addiction treatment facility

Jan. 23--BEAVER FALLS -- Beaver County Behavioral Health is planning to open a 39-bed addiction treatment facility using $2.8 million in startup money for the provider that is awarded a contract.

The project is funded through county reinvestment money from HealthChoices, Pennsylvania'sMedicaid program. Leftover money budgeted for the program can be used for approved programming, said Kate Lowery, an administrator with the Beaver County Behavioral Health Drug and Alcohol Programs. She said the surplus funds for the project had accumulated over several years.

"In light of the recent uptick in opioid use and overdose, we wanted to take a look at how to expand the drug and alcohol services in the county," she said. "... We thought that would be a way to give back to the community with our reinvestment dollars, meeting with those drug and alcohol clients in a time of such crisis."

Nearly 100 people in Beaver County died from drug overdoses last year, according to the Beaver County coroner's office. Some cases are still pending toxicology tests. There were 37 drug overdose deaths in the county in 2015.

Potential treatment bed shortages provided a catalyst in starting the project.

"We have been fortunate that we have been able to place our folks in need of detox and rehab pretty quickly," she said. "Our case managers have forged very good relationships with treatment providers. However, we also know that with the increase in demand for services, it will be beneficial to have another treatment provider in the region."

Beaver County Behavioral Health, of Beaver Falls, received three bids through a request for proposals late last year, Lowery said. A chosen provider has not been announced yet.

According to a document about HealthChoices reinvestment plans from the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, "reinvestment funds provide a unique opportunity for a financial incentive to reward sound financial management practices and allow the creative use of funds to fill identified gaps in the service system, test new innovative treatment approaches, and develop cost-effective alternatives to traditional services."

A treatment facility opened in Westmoreland County last year using the same funding stream there.

The process there between receiving a request for proposals and opening a facility took about two years, said Colleen Hughes, executive director of the Westmoreland Drug and Alcohol Commission.

"It is a long process. It's not just something that happens overnight," she said.

While there have been treatment centers in Westmoreland County in the past, no other treatment centers were located in the county at the time of its opening.

"We knew that there was a need for a non-hospital detox and rehab in Westmoreland County because we didn't have one," Hughes said.

Beaver County-based Gateway Rehabilitation Center was awarded the contract in Westmoreland County and used $600,000 in startup funds from the HealthChoices surplus to obtain leasing, staff and equipment.

The 16-bed non-hospital detox and rehab center opened in a leased wing of Excela Frick Hospital in Mount Pleasant in October. While the county provides help establishing the facility, it's Gateway's responsibility to maintain it.

"The sustainability comes from the provider," Hughes said.

Back in Beaver County, Lowery said the treatment facility would be a service offered in addition to organizations where the county has treatment center contracts.

The proposed facility will provide non-hospital detox and rehabilitation and will include 24 short-term residential beds, seven detox beds and eight long-term residential beds. The chosen provider would decide on the facility's location, staffing and other aspects of opening a center.

Beaver County's HealthChoices surplus funding will also be used to hire a civil service staff person to act as a warm hand-off coordinator at drug overdose scenes, providing overdose victims to treatment resources, Lowery said.

She also emphasized that the county would have pursued this project regardless of its status with Gateway Rehab, with which it had a decades long contract relationship that ended in December 2014. The residents that are impacted are enrolled in Pennsylvania's Health Choices program, and a lack of a contract prevents them from going to Gateway for treatment using county funding. She said recent talks with Gateway have been positive and hopes to re-establish a contract in the coming months.

"Is this is in response to the Gateway situation? It was not," Lowery said. "We still would have looked to do this project within the county."

Meanwhile, Paul Bacharach, CEO of Gateway Rehab, called the county-run treatment facility "an ineffective and irresponsible way to address the opioid epidemic in Beaver" because of a duplication in services.

Gateway Rehab was one of the three addiction treatment organizations that submitted a proposal to the county and did so because of the ongoing contract disputes, he said.

Gateway Rehab's Center Township facility has 194 treatment beds. Bacharach said he also feels differently about when the entities may come to an agreement with a new contract.

"I have no indication that there's any intent to establish a contract," he said.

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