Valley Health to open new substance abuse treatment campus

William Dean, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.
·2 min read

May 22—This week, Valley HealthCare System will open the doors on a new three-building treatment campus to help people with substance abuse disorder in Fairmont.

"It really helps the clients that we serve, because we don't have to move them around, geographically from Morgantown to Fairmont or wherever our programs were located before, " said COO Gerry Schmidt. "They're all on one campus."

One building will house the men in treatment programs, another the women. CEO Brian Sharp said that's meant to reduce distractions while in recovery.

"We wrote the grant with the idea of separating our male and female clients so that there were fewer distractions as they were going through the very difficult process of their early days in recovery from severe addiction, " Sharp said. "It's often the case that romantic relationships form while people are away from home and going through the same emotional process together. And that often leads to people then leaving the facility against medical advice."

In the age of fentanyl, that's led to people overdosing and dying when they've left.

The center building will house a 16-bed crisis treatment center — double the system's current capacity. All together there is more than 40, 000 square feet between the three buildings on nine acres of land. There is a kitchenette for snacks, a dining area, gym, computer lab for resume-building and computer skill education, treatment rooms, offices and more.

After an initial detox, a patient can walk over and actually see where they would go for a longer, in-patient program, Schmidt said.

The beds are filling up as soon as there is staff to handle more patients, Sharp said. Schmidt said staffing is the biggest limiting factor in their expansion. However, he had nothing but praise for existing employees.

"We've got some absolutely highly qualified, wonderful treatment staff, " he said.

The campus was partly funded with $3 million from the Ryan Brown Addiction Prevention and Recovery Fund.

"He was a young man who died of an overdose and he has wonderful parents who channeled their grief into helping make sure that other people didn't have to live through what they did, " Sharp said. "And I've always thought that that's one of the most admirable things that people can do with their grief — to reach out and help others. The Browns are wonderful people who have done a wonderful thing for the state."

The official ribbon-cutting ceremony will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday.