LYNNWOOD — More help will soon be available for people battling opioid abuse.
Evergreen Recovery Centers Lynnwood is scheduled to open later this month, offering detox programs for both drugs and alcohol.
It will accept Medicaid patients and those who have insurance with high deductibles or whose insurance won’t cover the treatment.
The opening of the building comes at a time when Snohomish County has some of the state’s highest death rates from opiate overdoses.
Last year, Snohomish County’s 11 Fentanyl deaths ranked as the second-highest in Washington. Some 94 people died in 2016 from heroin or prescription drug opiates.
At Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, 2,390 patients were treated last year for problems with opioids or narcotics. Since 2014, 63 percent of the 6,932 patients treated for opioid or narcotic problems were younger than 30.
Evergreen’s new treatment center, at 20508 56th Ave. W., Lynnwood, is expected to open later this month, although the specific date has not yet been set.
“South Snohomish County folks are very happy to have this resource,” said Linda Grant, chief executive officer of the nonprofit Evergreen Recovery Centers.
Grant said the new $3.8 million building is one of the organization’s biggest milestones since it opened its first building in Everett in 1985.
Some 80 to 100 people are expected to be admitted a month. “We’ll do at least 1,000 admissions in the first year,” she said.
Currently, the organization has to turn away about 15 people a day because it doesn’t have the capacity to treat them, Grant said.
“We’re hoping we can get people admitted at that point of crisis when they really are ready, and not ask them to call back for two to three days.”
Research shows that the best results occur when a patient who’s ready for treatment can get it right away. If they wait, they might start using drugs again, said Cammy Hart-Anderson, a manger for the county’s Human Services Department.
The treatment center has seven beds for women and nine for men. Most of those admitted for treatment are expected to be between the ages of 18 and 30. Patients typically stay five to six days.
It will have a full- and part-time staff of about 23 people, including nurses, counselors, and a program director.
Although opioid abuse might be peaking locally, methamphetamine is returning as drug of choice, Grant said.
Grant said she hopes the new detox center can help reduce opioid overdoses even among those who aren’t treated there.
Everyone who is a opiate user who is being discharged from the facility and isn’t going directly to treatment is given the overdose reversing drug naloxone and instructions on how to use it, she said.
Plans for adding a detox center in south Snohomish County date to back to 2010, Hart-Anderson said.
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486; salyer@heraldnet.com.
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