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The POWER initiative was created to fill a void in the treatment for public safety officers addicted to drugs and alcohol. Treatment centers in general are not doing enough to help these hard-working public servants, and that’s why POWER is so important. It’s not that people don’t care – there are many clinicians and therapists out there that care a great deal for their clients, they are just unable to make their way through the red tape of treatment centers to do what they know is best for their patients.
I know how they feel. I was a clinician out in the public until just one year ago. During that time, I often felt that my hands were tied whenever I tried to go against the insurance companies or facilities to do what was best for my clients. Sometimes it was the general way everyone was put through treatment that didn’t seem fair for patients. Sometimes it was the length of stay that wasn’t right.
Here’s an example: if an insurance company decides that two weeks is enough time to treat my client, you can almost bet that two weeks is all the time the patient will get in treatment, even if as their clinician I know two weeks is not enough and they are going to relapse. Often times the treatment facility will not try to fight the insurance company because they’d be giving treatment that they wouldn’t be reimbursed for. It’s a combination of big insurance companies trying to make a profit and treatment facilities trying to make a profit, and often times the ones being forgotten are the patients themselves. Sometimes it’s also the clinician that is forgotten and with little pay, huge responsibilities, and feeling like they can’t go against the flow, it makes for a very difficult profession. Those that stick it out are usually the dedicated ones that really care about their clients. But I often felt unable to really help my clients because no one would listen to me, the one who best knew what the patient needed.
How did the world of substance abuse treatment get this way? It could be in the meager beginnings of treatment facilities when individuals, usually recovering addicts themselves, welcomed drug addicts into their small community and took care of them. There was no such thing as insurance coverage for drug treatment, or protocol for what types of treatment worked best. Now we have moved from humble beginnings to an entire industry, and the transition hasn’t always gone well. The industry is run by those trying to make a profit, and even if clinicians have a heart that really wants to help their patients, they face firing or an impossible amount of resistance if they speak up for their patient.
That’s why I’m glad there is Treatment Solutions Network, which has come up with a way to get beyond the different agendas of those involved. With knowledge about how much influence insurance companies really have, along with good relationships with treatment facilities that listen to what the patients need, TSN has been able to make huge strides in the effective treatment of substance addiction. Now I’m a clinical liaison and I help the clinicians get what’s best for their patients.
I think we now have a call to re-examine the way we’ve run the field of substance abuse treatment. People are different from each other and they need to be treated differently. There should be no set length of stay in a treatment center, or one program that is supposed to fit all. Police officers, firefighters, and corrections officers face their own set of troubles when dealing with addiction, and they need to be connected with treatment facilities that will give them the specialized treatment they need to get sober.
We need to get the word out there that many people are mistreated in the system, and by making sure everyone involved plays by the rules, we will be looking out for our patients that are so in need of help.
