ADDICTION SERVICES GET REVIEWED

Addiction services in the Interior Health Authority will avoid a budget cut
this year.

But pending a review of each contract and the results they are producing,
the services could feel the sting of budget cuts next year.

In the meantime, one man will shoulder the responsibility for deciding just
where addiction services should go.

"The question is how should we operate this program," said Bill Moorehead.

"This program has gone through many deputy ministers. It really hasn't had
a home."

Moorehead is the medical health officer for the Okanagan Health Service
Area, a subdivision of the health authority.

He has been assigned to review addiction services and oversee their
transfer from the provincial ministry for children and families to the
health authority.

While control of local service providers and their contracts passed to the
health authority on April 1, Moorehead said a union dispute in the Lower
Mainland has meant control of unionized employees working for contractors
won't pass to the health authority until next September.

In the meantime, existing contracts have been extended, as is, for one more
year.

Moorehead said he has already begun conducting a thorough review of each of
the contract holders,

They range in size from Crossroads Treatment Centre and detox in Kelowna
and Phoenix House detox in Kamloops to a number of smaller residential and
outpatient programs throughout the health authority.

"We want to meet everybody and look at what they're delivering. We're
looking for accountability. Are we actually getting the job done that we
say we are doing?"

Total cost of addictions contracts in the health authority is just under
$11 million, Moorehead said, with several million more charged back to the
Ministry of Human Resources.

While no official word has come of cuts to that budget, Moorehead said the
government will be looking for the same efficiencies as expected of other
health care facilities under the recent health care restructuring.

He added there are no plans yet to hold public consultation on addiction
services."That's something we have to do somewhere along the line but at
the moment, we have to look at what we've got. The problem in the past has
been let's have the quick fix and move on.

"This has got to be a thoughtful process."