GREENWOOD, Ind. (AP) - Five more opioid addiction treatment centers will be established around Indiana under an expansion announced Wednesday as part of efforts to help people hooked on the pain-killing drugs that are linked to growth in heroin abuse.
The new sites at health care facilities in Greenwood, Fort Wayne, Terre Haute, Lafayette and Bloomington will join 14 existing centers across the state providing medication-assisted treatment to addicts. They are to be operating by the end of next June, the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration said.
FSSA Secretary Jennifer Walthall said the sites also will provide counseling and support services and will bolster the existing centers that provided treatment for some 10,000 people during 2016. The new locations were selected based on factors such as travel time for patients and counties with greater overdose rates, she said.
Indiana saw a more than 300 percent increase in the number of overdose deaths from heroin between 2010 and 2015, climbing from 54 to 239, according to state statistics. During that same period, opioid painkiller-related deaths increased nearly 20 percent, the statistics show.
Gov. Eric Holcomb attended Wednesday’s announcement at Valle Vista Health System in Greenwood, an Indianapolis suburb that will be one of the new treatment locations. Holcomb called opioid-related addictions the state’s “most challenging” crisis.
“We’re not going to be able to just arrest our way out of this problem,” the governor said. “That’s why these new centers are just so important.”
Walthall said Indiana’s Medicaid program will start covering methadone treatments as part of opioid addiction recovery on Aug. 1. She said this “will remove a significant barrier to treatment for those seeking to improve their lives.”
FSSA didn’t immediately have an estimate for how much the additional centers and methadone treatment option will cost.
Indiana currently has opioid treatment programs in Charlestown, Evansville, Fort Wayne, Gary, Indianapolis, Lawrenceburg, Marion, Merrillville, Richmond, South Bend and Valparaiso.
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