Pubdate: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 Source: Sunday Gazette-Mail (WV) Copyright: 2003, Sunday Gazette-Mail Contact: http://sundaygazettemail.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1404 Author: Tara Tuckwiller Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone) DOCTOR THINKING ABOUT OPENING METHADONE CLINIC A local doctor has filed a letter of intent with the state Health Care Authority to start a methadone clinic to serve Montgomery and the areas of upper Kanawha, Clay and Fayette counties. Charleston has had a methadone clinic for almost three years. It sells doses of methadone, a synthetic and addictive drug similar to heroin and morphine, to people who are trying to stop abusing prescription painkillers. But the Charleston clinic, part of a national chain run by a for-profit corporation called National Specialty Clinics, will sell its methadone only to people who can pony up $12 a day in cash. That works out to $4,380 a year - and NSC won't bill insurance companies. "I'm a doctor, and I can't afford that," said Mark McDaniel, who works at FamilyCare, a Kanawha Valley clinic that treats low-income patients on a sliding fee scale. McDaniel said he was frustrated with seeing painkiller-addicted patients in the clinic who can't afford NSC's for-profit methadone clinics, which dot West Virginia. That's why he and a colleague filed the letter of intent. "I want to make it so if you can't pay, you can still get treated," he said. "If somebody's hurting, you can't turn them away." Doses of methadone cost only pennies. The $12 a day at for-profit clinics pays the salaries of clinic staffers, overhead such as utilities and rent, and the rest is profit. The Charleston clinic alone last year cleared $1.4 million in pure profit for NSC, according to a report NSC filed with the state. But McDaniel said he's not interested in turning a profit. "If I was out there for money, I wouldn't be working at FamilyCare," he said. He's not even sure he'll wind up opening a clinic. "It seems to be more of an uphill battle" than he thought, he said. "If I could find a nonprofit organization to help out with it, I wouldn't mind volunteering the time to do it." Every methadone clinic has to have a doctor who is specially certified to prescribe methadone. "I have people coming every day to the clinic, looking for Lortab, OxyContin," McDaniel said. "I have one man who's on 70 milligrams of OxyContin. I didn't put him on it. Somebody else did. "But how do you get him off it?" - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin