HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Cabell Huntington Hospital Vice President Gene Preston was talking with a friend last week who had just fielded a question from a mother looking for help for her daughter that was on a heroin high.
It’s a question countless have had in recent years in West Virginia with the state in the throes of the opioid epidemic.
Later this year Preston said he’ll have an answer for that parent. It’s called PROACT, Provider Response Organization for Addiction Treatment. And as the name suggests it’s a proactive attempt to offer a full range of services.
“Right now there’s a lot of fragmentation in the recovery community ranging from methadone clinics to institutional therapy. They need to be put into a common platform,” Preston told MetroNews.
Plans for PROACT were announced last week. Cabell Huntington, St. Mary’s Medical Center, Marshall Health, Thomas Health System and Valley Health will use a variety of funding sources, both private and public, to establish one-stop-shops in Huntington and Charleston.
Individuals suffering from the opioid epidemic through an emergency room will be offered to take part in PROACT. It’s all about timing, Preston said.
“If we can discharge them into a triage system that’s going to help them find the right modality of care because that’s when you can impact them the most at that moment when they know, ‘I gotta change. I gotta make a difference. I gotta stop,’” Preston said.
“Linking individuals to resources in a timely manner and following them through their recovery journey is a valuable approach,” Nancy Sullivan, Acting Commissioner of DHHR’s Bureau for Behavioral Health and Health Facilities, said in a news release last week. “This program will help assure early identification and an immediate and sustained response of skilled, empathic supports for opioid overdose survivors.”
Preston, who also serves as the president of PROACT’s board of directors, hopes to build off the success of Huntington’s Quick Response Teams which report nearly a-third of overdose victims they follow-up on agree to receive further treatment.
“If we can bring that type of approach, more widespread, for every 10 people that have an issue if we get 30 percent into a recovery program that’s making a huge impact,” Preston said.
Preston hopes the Huntington and Charleston PROACT locations can open on the same day in early August.
The support from both the community and health care providers has been tremendous, Preston said. There’s a recognition that all that’s being offered needs to be put into a common platform.
“We try to put these people into buckets and we stereotype them and we apply prejudices to them and we’ve got to transcend that in order to win this war,” Preston said.
PROACT will be located in the former CVS at 8th Avenue and 20th Street in Huntington and St. Francis Hospital in Charleston.