LETTER: Hospital’s Residency Program would benefit from Heroin Clinic

As a substance abuse counselor, I work with the population who is afflicted with this dependency and it is heart-wrenching that only a small percentage of this population has availability of services provided to them by either the county’s lone Methadone clinic or by physicians who prescribe Suboxone (Buprenorphine HCl/Naloxone HCI dehydrate).

NewsLanc has stated that an investment of $250,000 (of their $113,000,000 recent profit margin) will provide considerably improved services to many, more of the opioid-dependent population. At first, this outlay of $250,000 may seem considerable, especially in this time ofeconomic turmoil. However, it should also be noted that to offer preventive services (i.e. proposed Suboxone clinics within Lancaster General Hospital and their many satellite clinic sites) to this population will actually cost less to medical community.

It does not take considerable accounting skills to recognize that an investment of $250,000
(or 0.0022% of Lancaster General Hospital’s recent annual profit margin) would provide much-needed medical services to this population.

With stabilization of a patient’s health via opioid-dependent treatment, it has been described in peer-review literature that decreased death rates (KreekJ et al., Subst Abuse Treatment, 2002), decreased HIV rates (Metzgar etal., Public Health Reports, 1998) and decreased crime rates (Gerstein DR et al., CALDATA General Report, 1994).

For those Christian citizens of the Lancaster County who read that death rates are decreased with treatment and feel that the opioid-dependent population deserves to die as that individual’s dependency is their own choice, please consider this ill-fated thought process next time an offertory at your next church service is made.

I would also suspect that many Lancaster County citizens state that it is not the financial responsibility of the entire population to treatment the opioid-dependent. So, I’ll reiterate my objective argument, with a less that ¼ of a one-percent investment by Lancaster General Hospital from their recent annual profit windfall, a many-times-over savings to the county will be made by avoidance of unnecessary emergency healthcare services as well as the monopolizing of the county’s police services to thwart, respectively, this population’s health needs and criminal behaviors.

Subjectively, Lancaster General Hospital’s family practice residency program would greatly benefit from the $250,000 investment toward services and the establishment of Duke Street and satellite clinic offerings. Family practice residents would greatly benefit from exposure to the opioid-dependent population and the experience of offering treatment such as Suboxone. Lancaster General Hospital has boasted that their family practice residency program is viewed very favorably from a national perspective. An inclusion of an opioid-dependent treatment educational tract to this residency program would only fortify this program nationally.

And with the increase of our population census, even with a steady opioid-dependent percentage of population, there will be more patients in need of opioid treatment. In other words, educate future physicians to provide care to our country’s future population.

Lancaster General Hospital, I implore you to consider putting forth the $250,000 toward an all-inclusive opioid treatment program for the county population. Both objectively and subjectively, there will be tremendous benefit to the entire Lancaster County population. Let the remainder of the country recognize that Lancaster County is a population who truly cares for the present and future healthcare needs of our citizens.