An inpatient addiction treatment center in Connersville, Indiana will receive a $1 million grant from Purdue Pharma to help residents of Fayette County.
Fayette Regional Health System (FRHS), a hospital network with the main facility located in Connersville, announced the grant to develop a new inpatient addiction treatment center. FRHS has provided healthcare services to Fayette County and the Whitewater Valley for more than 100 years.
FRHS currently has two substance abuse treatment programs for youths at its facility in Connersville. The Detoxification Withdrawal Management program offers 12 beds for youths, between the ages of 6 and 17. The average length of stay for adolescents in this drug detox program is three to five days.
The residential treatment provides eight beds for male youths, between the ages of 12 and 18, with the length of stay averaging around four months.
Along with its drug and alcohol treatment services, FRHS provides other medical services such as pain management, fitness, and wellness.
The facility where the inpatient addiction treatment center will be developed was previously a pharmacy owned by the Fayette Regional Foundation. The FRHS, after being gifted the venue, began to look for grant money and partners to help create this inpatient addiction treatment center.
“The process to acquire funding for the program was a grant proposal to the social responsibility division with Purdue Pharma,” said Katrina Norris, the director of Behavioral Health & Addiction Services at FRHS. “Our proposal outlined our current services and the gap in the continuum of care in this region. Upon receipt, several phone calls occurred between Purdue Pharma and myself. A site visit was conducted with Purdue Pharma and then upon their board approval funding was provided.”
This inpatient addiction treatment center will be under the North Star Recovery umbrella — a healthcare group that provides care to residents in East Indiana. North Star provides drug detox services in a 46-bed unit to adults who stay in addiction treatment for an average of five to eight days.
The new inpatient addiction treatment center will provide 30 beds for adults and allow patients to stay up to 28 days. The center will be employed with therapists, social workers and other professionals with experience helping people overcome the physical and mental hurdles of substance use disorders.
North Star Recovery Center determines the detoxification process based on four key factors: an individual’s body composition and metabolism; the drug and dosage used; the length of time a person has used a substance, and other potential addictions that patients may have.
An inpatient addiction treatment center is vital to Fayette County, where preliminary data has indicated that there were 18 drug-related overdose deaths in 2017 and 16 deaths in 2016, according to the Indiana State Department of Health. In 2017, men represented 62 percent of the deaths. Fayette County’s crude drug-related death rate was significantly higher than the rate of the state.
“The new recovery service will have a huge impact on our community and region as a whole,” Norris said. “Residential services provide more in-depth therapeutic work and time for healing to occur, which ultimately improves the likelihood of long-term recovery. We have partnerships and collaborations with various key stakeholders in the community and one of our most desired outcomes is to assist in the development of a healthy workforce.”
She added that the recovery center aims to meet the highest standards of care in addiction treatment and “lead the way for other communities that have been devastated by addiction to rebuild, restructure, and restore hope.”
“In addition, we are constantly moving forward with our anti-stigma campaigns to educate the public on the disease of addiction.”
