Canton-based CommQuest has opened the first medication-assisted treatment clinic in one of the areas of the state hit hardest by the opioid crisis. Schultze has more.
The clinic opened in the East Liverpool last week. It offers Suboxone -- doses that give addicts enough medication to ease them through withdrawal but not enough to get high.
CommQuest CEO Keith Hochadel says the clinic expects to also offer Vivitrol – which blocks brain receptors so opioids can’t activate them – as well as counseling and other wrap-around services. Until now, he says, options down along the Ohio River have pretty much consisted of individual medical offices.
“Some places like that are doing really good work. But we also know there are some out there that are just doing the minimum to get by and really have become almost Suboxone pill mills like the opiate pill mills were previously.”
Hochadel says CommQuest decided not to offer methadone after objections were raised in the community. A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine last week says medication-assisted treatment is the most effective treatment for opioid addiction and should be expanded
