DOCTOR THINKING ABOUT OPENING METHADONE CLINIC

A local doctor has filed a letter of intent with the state Health Care
Authority to start a methadone clinic to serve Montgomery and the
areas of upper Kanawha, Clay and Fayette counties.

Charleston has had a methadone clinic for almost three years. It sells
doses of methadone, a synthetic and addictive drug similar to heroin
and morphine, to people who are trying to stop abusing prescription
painkillers.

But the Charleston clinic, part of a national chain run by a
for-profit corporation called National Specialty Clinics, will sell
its methadone only to people who can pony up $12 a day in cash. That
works out to $4,380 a year - and NSC won't bill insurance companies.

"I'm a doctor, and I can't afford that," said Mark McDaniel, who works
at FamilyCare, a Kanawha Valley clinic that treats low-income patients
on a sliding fee scale.

McDaniel said he was frustrated with seeing painkiller-addicted
patients in the clinic who can't afford NSC's for-profit methadone
clinics, which dot West Virginia. That's why he and a colleague filed
the letter of intent.

"I want to make it so if you can't pay, you can still get treated," he
said. "If somebody's hurting, you can't turn them away."

Doses of methadone cost only pennies. The $12 a day at for-profit
clinics pays the salaries of clinic staffers, overhead such as
utilities and rent, and the rest is profit. The Charleston clinic
alone last year cleared $1.4 million in pure profit for NSC, according
to a report NSC filed with the state.

But McDaniel said he's not interested in turning a
profit.

"If I was out there for money, I wouldn't be working at FamilyCare,"
he said.

He's not even sure he'll wind up opening a clinic.

"It seems to be more of an uphill battle" than he thought, he said.
"If I could find a nonprofit organization to help out with it, I
wouldn't mind volunteering the time to do it." Every methadone clinic
has to have a doctor who is specially certified to prescribe methadone.

"I have people coming every day to the clinic, looking for Lortab,
OxyContin," McDaniel said. "I have one man who's on 70 milligrams of
OxyContin. I didn't put him on it. Somebody else did.

"But how do you get him off it?"