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(Methadone) APPLICATIONS FOR METHADONE CLINICS DROPPED A corporation that runs a chain of methadone clinics has withdrawn its applications to open clinics in Greenbrier, Mercer and Mineral counties. National Specialty Clinics Inc. is in the process of being bought by a bigger corporation. CRC Health Group Inc., an 8-year-old corporation, became the nation's biggest for-profit provider of drug and alcohol treatment this year when it bought a group of clinics in the San Diego area. CRC now owns 30 methadone clinics in 11 states, including the Life Center of Galax, a southwestern Virginia methadone clinic that has vied with NSC in recent months for the right to open methadone clinics in Beckley and Roanoke, Va. - - A subsidiary of a subsidiary of CRC is buying National Specialty Clinics, including its six methadone clinics in West Virginia, for $24 million, according to documents filed with the West Virginia Health Care Authority. Those six clinics - in Charleston, Beckley, Huntington, Clarksburg, Parkersburg and Williamson - will see no changes as a result of the buyout, according to NSC. NSC had gotten the state's permission to open methadone clinics in Greenbrier and Mineral counties, and it had applied for permission to open one in Mercer County. But NSC can't transfer that permission to its new parent company, said Dayle Stepp of the Health Care Authority, so it had to withdraw the applications. NSC has gotten state permission to open another methadone clinic, in Weirton. That one, like the other three, never opened. But NSC isn't being forced to withdraw it. The Weirton clinic didn't open, a consultant argued on NSC's behalf, because the Health Care Authority persuaded NSC to listen to people in the community who didn't want it. "Without those discussions, [the clinic] would have opened in July 2003, have already operated for three months and already be treating over a hundred patients based on the conservative needs assessment included in the application," consultant Raymona Kinneberg wrote to the Health Care Authority. NSC had planned to open its Weirton clinic on the second floor above a bowling alley at 450 Elaine St., according to an August letter to the Health Care Authority. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman