State revoking methadone clinic’s license
September 24, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
The state of Minnesota says it will revoke the
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State revoking methadone clinic’s license
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Interesting, all of the comments that were here on this story must have been deleted by moderator.
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I believe you may be thinking of the comments on this other story.
As far as I can find, no comments have been deleted from this thread, but there are indeed multiple similarly-titled stories on the DNT’s site that also have comments.
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After reading the DNT’s recent expose that outlined just how rampant and blatant the abuse was at this clinic, shutting it down is the logical decision. When the only defense the clinic operators could come up with was “but if we don’t provide free methadone for them here, they will steal to use other drugs on the street”, that tells us this clinic was not in the business of helping anyone kick their habit or become sober. We the taxpayers don’t get up and go to work every day so we can have our money taken from us to buy drugs for addicts. Use our tax money to help them get clean, don’t just enable their addiction.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Proof positive of a “social service” agency that is not designed to serve its clients but instead just provides an excuse to pay staff for acomplishing nothing…or indeed actually harming their clients. Now perhaps other “social service” agencies should be scrutinized to see if they are actually acomplishing anything or just providing taxpayer funded salaries for their staff.
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I have to agree with the two postings above… a company out of Florida and a Dr. out of Texas don’t give a hoot about the patients…this is a profit center for them. I am shocked at the 43 million dollar number! I don’t know how to better treat addicts, but I do know there are professionals who could be consulted and provide insight.
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The real questions are: 1) Where was the DNT after the 2009 inspection that first found serious violations? 2) Why isn’t this article about a State bureaucracy that failed to monitor a treatment program properly, and that allowed it to continue to operate in spite of evidence that its patients were not being properly served?
Shutting down this program is the WRONG answer. Every methadone clinic has some clients that try to game the system. You expect that. Good clinics have procedures in place to uncover and deal with those clients–clinically. The overwhelmingly evidence is that methadone is the most safe and effective treatment for opiate addiction, yet it remains heavily stigmatized and misunderstood. Articles like this create heat, but shed no light. A competent, community-based, non-profit provider could turn a program like this around in three months or less–closing the clinic cause untold suffering among its hundreds of treatment-compliant patients who are getting their lives together. And it’s wrong to say that their efforts are ruined by the few bad apples. Their efforts are ruined by a system that perpetuates corporate medicine, fails to fund adequate oversight, and allows political favors to block regulatory enforcement. The fault here is with a government that does not provide treatment-on-demand, and provides financial incentives for companies to mistreat patients without enforcing existing regulations. Minnesota could have revoked this license years ago and turned the operation over to a community-based provider that cared about its clients–its the State DHS that this article should have been blasting.
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