Bangor advisory group tours methadone clinic

BANGOR – A methadone clinic set to open this summer in a Hogan Road strip mall already has a waiting list of 10 patients, according to a representative of the Florida-based company that is going to run it.

Ultimately, however, Colonial Management Group’s Penobscot County Metro Treatment Center could serve as many as 250 people struggling with addiction to opiates.

During a meeting Thursday with members of a local advisory group, Lynn Costigan, Colonial’s associate director for new development, provided a tour of the company’s clinical space and answered questions about the operation, expected to start up sometime this summer.

The advisory group was established earlier this year by the City Council to make sure that community concerns about the clinic are heard and addressed, according to Councilor Susan Hawes, the group’s chairman.

Renovations are completed, though some of the furniture has yet to arrive, Costigan said during the tour. She said that city personnel have inspected the clinic and should issue a certificate of occupancy soon.

The wild card is when the necessary federal and state inspection can be completed, she said.

Once it opens, though, the clinic will serve adults only, Costigan said. And unless they are scheduled for counseling or undergo random drug testing, most patients will be at the clinic for “between five and 10 minutes a day,” she said.

“They’ll come in, do their thing and leave,” Costigan said during the tour of the leased space the clinic will occupy.

During the tour, committee members saw the waiting area, and entered through a pair of frosted glass doors. The windows were covered with vertical blinds, another measure of privacy from patrons of the rest of the strip mall’s businesses.

They also saw the conference room off the waiting area and went down the hallway lined with offices for staff, the area in which patient records and medication will be stored under lock and key, and the window where patients will line up for their daily methadone doses.

Methadone will be delivered in liquid form, in sealed, single-dose childproof packaging, Costigan said.

Colonial also will provide substance abuse counseling and support groups for those who have contracted Hepatitis C and who need to improve their parenting skills, among other things.

In response to a question from panel member Gary Eckmann, who owns the McDonald’s Restaurant across the parking lot from the clinic, Costigan said she has met with local security companies but has no specific plan to hire security at this point.

A concern that future neighbors and city officials have expressed about the clinic is that it could draw drug dealers seeking to prey on an already vulnerable population.

Bill Lowenstein, associate director of the state Office of Substance Abuse and a committee member, said that while that can occur, the state has found that the most prevalent problem is verbal arguments that result from “personality conflicts [among opiate addicts]. In a sense, it’s a close- knit community.

“What we ask is that clinics have a presence [outside],” Lowenstein said. “It doesn’t have to be security. It could be a staff person.”

Costigan said that Colonial has a plan in place and that those who don’t abide by the program’s rules could be ousted.

Also Thursday, advisory panel members met Gerri Plourde, who has been hired as the clinic’s program director.

Costigan said others hired to staff the clinic include:

. Russ Dubois, who will serve as clinical supervisor.

. Dr. Arvind Patel, hired to serve as the clinic’s physician.

. Leo Yapsuga, who will be the clinic’s pharmacist.