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By BrightView
Published: November 20, 2018
Updated: June 17, 2021

CHILLICOTHE – A new outpatient drug treatment center opening Monday (11/19) has taken some cues from how emergency departments operate – aim to treat anyone regardless of insurance and respond quickly.

BrightView will begin seeing patients on Monday at its newest clinic location at 126 E. Second St. It has six other clinics in southwestern Ohio and plans to open clinics in Columbus and Toledo.

BrightView was founded by 42-year-old Dr. Shawn Ryan who started his career in emergency medicine and has worked for over a decade in the Greater Cincinnati region.

brightview healthHis shift in focus came about after seeing an increase in drug overdoses and addiction issues in the emergency department coupled with touchstones in his personal life including the loss of a friend and a colleague entering treatment.

“Myself and others were kind of freaking out … In 2013, I said that’s it. I can’t stand around here anymore and watch this collapse,” Ryan said.

Ryan, who also was a hospital administrator for a bit at Mercy Health, worked with a drug treatment agency before opening his first BrightView clinic in 2015. While the clinic uses medications like Vivitrol and Suboxone to aid in treatment plans, they aren’t used with everyone and never done without coordinating counseling, Ryan said.

“We treat it as a chronic relapsing disease,” said Melissa Sahlin, director of clinical operations.

Each person is individually assessed, and success is viewed as “progress not perfection,” Ryan said. For some, the treatment may take several years, Sahlin said. Initially, though, all patients are seen several times a week until they are stabilized.

BrightView has a 24/7 call line, uses telemedicine, and do intake assessments six days a week to get people started with treatment quickly, Ryan said. The Chillicothe location has at least eight clinical and medical staff hired from the area, but Ryan expects staffing and services to grow. “If people want help, we want to see them,” Ryan said, adding they will “ramp up” staffing as needed to meet demand.

 

Ryan began considering Chillicothe for a new location after Dr. John Gabis, county coroner and director of the PACCAR Medical Education Center, reached out to him and due to the need for more addiction treatment in rural areas.

While providing drug treatment services is BrightView’s top priority, Ryan said they also focus on engaging in the community and will help educate area physicians on identifying addiction issues with patients and how to get them into recovery.

Ryan serves on various regional, state, and national groups focused on developing solutions for the opiate epidemic and is president of the Ohio Society of Addiction Medicine.

“This is a medical problem, and we need to make sure the systems are engaged,” Ryan said.

For more information about BrightView, call 513-834-7063 or go to its website at www.BrightViewHealth.com.

Written by: Jona Ison, Chillicothe Gazette | Chillicothe | The Chillicothe Gazette Original article here