MEDICAL GROUPS OPPOSE PROPOSED JOHNSON CITY METHADONE CLINIC

JOHNSON CITY - A proposed methadone clinic in Johnson City will face
opposition from other medical groups in town.

"From our perspective it doesn't make sense," said Dr. Ronald D. Franks,
ETSU dean of medicine and vice president for health affairs at the James H.
Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University.

Franks said he and representatives from Frontier Health and the James H.
Quillen Veterans Affairs Medical Center at Mountain Home have met about the
certificate of need filed with the Tennessee Health Facilities Commission
in Nashville last month to open the Johnson City Addiction Research and
Treatment clinic.

"First of all, we are all very committed to taking care of patients with
substance abuse problems and have established programs to do so - and we do
it without methadone," Franks said.

Medical school officials are planning to file an official letter of
opposition to the project.

"We'll testify if necessary," said Franks.

The Quillen College of Medicine, Frontier Health and the VA all operate
addiction treatment programs and say they are successful without the use of
methadone.

"We run a very large substance abuse treatment program, and we see no need
for a methadone treatment program," said Dr. Carl Gerber, VA Medical Center
director. "If we saw a need we'd have one for the veterans."

Dr. Randall Jessee, senior vice president of specialty services at Frontier
Health, agrees.

"The alternatives we use are abstinence based, and they are effective," he
said. "It's harder to detox someone on methadone than it is someone on heroin."

Franks and Jessee said the medical community in Johnson City has chosen a
"more comprehensive approach" for substance abuse treatment that calls for
patients to look at "what led to the addiction in the first place."

"Methadone, as it turns out, is really a substitute of one addictive
substance for another - it's sometimes necessary, but not ideal," said
Franks. "Non-addictive medicines can be used to treat a person who is
having problems."

Health care officials cite other concerns such as an influx of people
needing the treatment.

"The problem with methadone clinics is there's a small percent of people in
your own community who need it, and if it's established you have people
travel in from where there isn't a clinic," he said.

In addition to counseling and mental health services, Franks said
additional social services would also be needed.

"Not that they aren't entitled to it, but that means there are fewer
services available for people in our own area," he said. "The addition of a
methadone clinic would be a net liability rather than an asset."

Jessee said Frontier Health also has questions about how numbers on the
certificate of need application were determined.

The application predicts the proposed clinic would treat 175 patients in
the first year and 250 patients in the second year.

"We don't know them, and we don't know what kind of care they will really
provide," he said.

Jessee also said the counseling regimen proposed in the application is "not
even close to being effective."

"They don't even have a family program that I'm aware of, and you have to
treat the whole family."

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