County losing drug program

Local officials must find a new treatment home for low-income pregnant women hooked on drugs or alcohol because the El Paso County Health and Environment Department is abandoning its remaining substance abuse treatment program to refocus its mission.

The department’s program, dubbed the “McMasters Clinic,” was left over from the 1970s era of health departments’ straying from their original task of maintaining the health of communities, not individuals, director Rosemary Bakes-Martin said.

El Paso and Boulder counties are the only two that receive state funding for substance abuse treatment programs.

But now with tuberculosis and other potential publichealth crises to get a handle on, Bakes-Martin and her crew will wash their hands of Mc-Masters by July 1.

“Really what public health should be doing is providing the information and helping the local health providers,” Bakes-Martin said.

She added that substance abusers will be better treated at facilities capable of treating the whole person, rather than just the addiction.

Five years ago, the department offered eight treatment services. Adult counseling and a program for pregnant women are the only remaining programs the department offers.

“It is a loss for us,” said Annette Fryman, senior vice president of Connect Care, a local nonprofit charged with managing state and federal funding for substance abuse programs. “It is going to be incumbent upon us to find someone who does it just as well.”

While Fryman said there are plenty of treatment facilities that can take over the health department’s adult counseling program, Connect Care is in the process of finding a facility capable of taking over the department’s treatment of low-income pregnant women who are substance abusers.

Bakes-Martin began paring down the program in 2002 when the Colorado Springs Treatment Center opened. Both were offering methadone treatment, used to care for heroin addicts.

The health department saw the treatment as too expensive for there to be overlap in the community and transferred its methadone clients to the treatment center.

“Was it hard on clients in the beginning?” Fryman said. “Probably. But they transitioned fine, and they are getting their needs met.”

The methadone transfer cut the health department’s client roster in half, from 1,230 admissions in 2001 to 614 admissions in 2004.

In that same period, the department went from swallowing $1.2 million of the cost to run McMasters to $270,000.

At the end of July, McMasters had less than 300 admissions.

Still, with the program’s end, about 600 El Paso County addicts will be in need of a treatment home that will offer the same sliding-scale fee the department offers.

Fryman and Bakes-Martin stress that there is ample time for the transition.

Even though the private facilities that have absorbed the health department’s other programs base their sliding-scale fees on federal poverty guidelines, inconsistencies exist, Fryman said.

“One of our goals this year is to ensure that these sliding scales are consistent,” she said.

Boulder County officials have no plans to discontinue its substance abuse treatment program.

“The people that have the potential to cause the most harm in our community are the ones that we try to contain and provide the most services for,” said Ann Noonan, Boulder County’s Addictive Recovery Centers division manager.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0232 or carlyn.mitchell@gazette.com