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New York medical-maintenance program offers a way forward to individuals
who were addicted to heroin and are ready to move on from methadone
clinics, Capital News TV-9 in Albany, N.Y., reported May 10.
"Methadone treatment in the United States is hedged around so many extraordinary
draconian regulations that it is really the equivalent of lifetime parole," said
Regina Belser, who has been going to a methadone clinic for two decades. For
people like Belser, who no longer need the rigid regulations of methadone maintenance
clinics, New York offers a medical-maintenance program that provides methadone
prescriptions via private, one-on-one consultations with a doctor.
Joseph LaCoppola of the Whitney M. Young Jr. Health Center in Albany, said patients
who meet behavioral requirements and have made a four-year commitment to methadone
maintenance are eligible for the program.
"It's office-based privacy. A prescription is written. You are no longer going
to a dispensing window to be observed drinking your medication or take your medication
home. All those policies and procedures, and regulations are waived," said LaCoppola.
The medical-maintenance program at the Whitney M. Young Jr. Health Center is
one of the first in the nation to be offered through a community health center. |
