Read on Twitter
*THREAD* as promised
1/ I began investigating #addiction treatment in #Pennsylvania in 2019. Two years + one pandemic later, @edmahonreporter & I are sharing what we discovered via @khnews & @spotlightpa #addictiontreatment #opioidcrisis #opioidepidemic https://buff.ly/3y4H1tw
1/ I began investigating #addiction treatment in #Pennsylvania in 2019. Two years + one pandemic later, @edmahonreporter & I are sharing what we discovered via @khnews & @spotlightpa #addictiontreatment #opioidcrisis #opioidepidemic https://buff.ly/3y4H1tw
2/ Here are some of our key findings:
3/ The lack of oversight can have a real human impact. Some patients have received inadequate treatment at rehab facilities. Some even died. Govt records show facilities fraudulently billed insurers and raked in tax-payer money from the opioid crisis.
4/ Ian Kalinowski’s brother, Adam, died by suicide in 2014 while at a rehab in western PA. Records show that center had a history of violating state rules, but the state had taken few disciplinary actions against it at that point. 
@KristinaS_Trib
@KristinaS_Trib
5/ Ian’s family later won a wrongful death lawsuit against the facility, Addiction Specialists Inc. Today, his family is still grieving. Ian’s son, whose middle name is Adam, will never meet his namesake uncle.
6/ At SOAR methadone clinic in Philly, former patients and employees told me and a state agency that the company pursued profits by getting as many clients in the door as possible, with little care for the quality of treatment they received.
7/ Former counselors said they were overworked & overwhelmed. Patients said they went weeks without individual counseling. One said he couldn’t get an appt the week his brother died. Another was assigned 5 counselors in a year, making it difficult to make any progress, she said.
8/ The head of PA’s Dept of Drug and Alcohol Programs, which is in charge of licensing and overseeing 800+ addiction treatment facilities, told us: “It’s not our job to really police the providers.”
9/ The dept employs two dozen people to conduct inspections of addiction treatment facilities. Public records show that’s about half the number of dog wardens employed by the state to inspect kennels.
A 2017 state audit of the dept. said it was understaffed and under resourced.
A 2017 state audit of the dept. said it was understaffed and under resourced.
10/ Though the dept posts reports from its site inspections online, the info provides a limited window into the reality of a rehab. There’s no indication of which violations are most severe & former rehab employees in PA said inspections can be falsified with fraudulent paperwork
11/ That means Pennsylvanians — who suffer one of the highest drug overdose death rates in the nation, per the CDC — are left in the dark about which treatment facilities have troubling track records or which offer better care.
12/ What could help? Patients, families, counselors & others had thoughts, including this bill sitting in PA legislature that would give the dept. power to assess fees. That might weed out repeat violators, the dept. secretary said. https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billinfo/BillInfo.cfm?syear=2021&sind=0&body=S&type=B&bn=166
13/ Here are some other next steps they suggested:
14/ Read more in our full investigation, where @edmahonreporter & I detail what we found in over a year of reporting, 80+ interviews & a review of thousands of pages of court and govt records via @spotlightpa @khnews https://khn.org/news/article/addiction-treatment-providers-in-pa-face-little-state-scrutiny-despite-harm-to-clients/
15/ Bonus: Check out what PA lawmakers told @edmahonreporter @SpotlightPA about additional powers they'd like to give the dept... and why some groups oppose such moves https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2021/05/pa-addiction-treatment-providers-state-fines-fees-support-opposition/
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