Latest news with #ElliotHealthSystem
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Elliot to operate The Doorway in Manchester starting July 1
Elliot Health System announced Thursday it has been selected to operate the Manchester location of The Doorway, a statewide program that connects people to treatment and recovery services for substance use. The transition will officially take place on July 1. The Doorway is a statewide network coordinated by the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), with nine regional hubs offering access to screening, evaluation, treatment options and ongoing recovery support. The Greater Manchester location is currently located at 60 Rogers St., Suite 210. 'Assuming leadership of The Doorway aligns with our mission,' said Dr. Gregory Baxter, president & CEO of Elliot Health System, 'and we are ready to strengthen this critical access point, enhance coordination and ensure every person who reaches out is met with timely, effective support.' Officials at Elliot Health System said that under the leadership of Annette Escalante, director of substance use services, The Doorway will be 'positioned within a continuum of services' that includes behavioral health, crisis stabilization, and care coordination, 'making it easier for individuals to get the help they need at any stage of recovery.' Martha Dodge, senior vice president and chief nursing executive said Elliot is 'preparing to serve approximately 1,500 individuals annually, and we are committed to ensuring each person receives timely, respectful, and effective care.' For the past five years, the state has received about $28 million annually to address substance use disorders. The Doorway is part of that response. In 2024, New Hampshire's two largest cities recorded the lowest number of overdoses in a year since the COVID pandemic. There were 710 suspected overdoses in Manchester and Nashua in 2024 — 526 of those occurred in Manchester, 184 in Nashua, according to data released by American Medical Response, which provides ambulance services to both cities. Sixty-six overdoses last year were fatal — 46 in Manchester, 20 in Nashua. Nashua recorded both the lowest number of suspected opioid overdoses and lowest number of suspected opioid deaths in one year since AMR began tracking the data in 2015. pfeely@
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Manchester SUD treatment specialists fear the repercussions of Medicaid cuts
U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan (left) speaks with substance use disorder treatment specialists at Elliot Health System during an event in Manchester on April 14 about how Medicaid cuts would affect their work. (Photo by William Skipworth/New Hampshire Bulletin) Abby L'Heureux, a physician and addiction specialist at the Center for Recovery Management in Manchester, is already worried about some of her patients who have lost Medicaid coverage. Now, as Republicans in Washington, D.C., make massive cuts to the federal budget — which experts say will most likely impact Medicaid — she and her colleagues could see even more of their patients lose coverage for the care they need. At an event organized by U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan and Elliot Health System in Manchester earlier this month, L'Heureux told the story of a 30-year-old man who started using cocaine, alcohol, and opioids as a teenager and was incarcerated for the first time at 13. She said he has an extensive family history of substance use disorder as his mother died during an overdose and all his parents and grandparents have been incarcerated. On top of that, he has a seizure disorder and was homeless when he first began treatment with the center. While he hasn't yet achieved stable long term sobriety, she said they were beginning to see success when they got him on a medication regime that includes an injectable. 'He's just been doing so well and we continue to have little slips here and there, and we're working on things, but he keeps coming,' she said. 'And that's a win for us, that he keeps showing up, and he keeps trying. And we always have hope that it's just one step closer to his goal. His goal is abstinence and so, and we're just gonna keep walking with him, one step closer, one step closer, and we're gonna have setbacks, and that's just a part of the process. But, he's been doing so well, so much better, now that we've got him on a medication that works for him.' L'Heureux said he's feeling so well that he's begun working full time again because he 'just functions much better when he's working full time, and really has things to do during the day.' However, this came with a drawback. He just lost the Medicaid coverage he uses to pay for the treatment because he's now making too much money. She said his injectable alone costs $2,000 monthly without insurance and he has 10 different medications. She said they worry about how the Medicaid change will impact his progress, though he's worked with a peer support coordinator to find marketplace insurance. 'That's one of the things that we have to continue to focus on,' Hassan added. 'Somebody is getting well enough to work, which is the goal — one of the goals — and then, but we don't want them to lose insurance in the process. We want them to be able to keep coming here.' Conversely, L'Heureux spoke of a 37-year-old man who started using cocaine at age 13, opioids at 15, and crystal meth at 22. He began working with her at the Center for Recovery Management and is taking 16 milligrams of a combination product of multiple opioid use medications. Now, he's been sober since August 2023 and has become an advocate for his peers who speaks at commitment meetings and runs his own sober living facility. She said he even saved somebody from an overdose recently using the emergency medication Narcan. He is still able to use Medicaid for his treatments, which she said has been huge in his recovery. The April 14 meeting came amid growing fears that Medicaid, the country's public health care program for those with low income or high needs, could be heavily scaled down in the federal budgeting process. On April 10, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve legislation outlining the federal budget. That outline, which was passed 216-214 entirely through Republican support, calls for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to clear the way for President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — which has long been lambasted by the left and economists as disproportionately benefitting the wealthy — to be renewed. The outline instructs several committees to make varying levels of cuts to different areas of the budget. That includes the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has been tasked with cutting its portion of the budget by $880 billion over 10 years. It doesn't explicitly specify that these cuts must come from Medicaid, but because the program comprises about $8.2 trillion of the $8.6 trillion the committee can cut from, it would be impossible to do so without reducing Medicaid or Medicare. Some Republican lawmakers have floated the idea of cutting Medicaid by about a third over 10 years. Meanwhile, Democrats on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, including Hassan, estimate that roughly 24 million people would lose their health care coverage if this one-third cut went into effect, 10 million of whom would be children. In New Hampshire, that's 60,000 people and 30,000 children. Almost 1 million people receive medication treatment for opioid use disorder through Medicaid, according to committee Democrats. Nearly 10,000 of them live in New Hampshire. Of those 10,000, an estimated 70% or more are able to do so only through the Medicaid expansion, which New Hampshire enacted in 2014. That expansion program is at perhaps the greatest risk in potential Medicaid cuts. This is because in 2018, New Hampshire state legislators (Medicaid is operated and funded jointly by the federal government and states) passed a trigger law which would eliminate that expansion should federal funding for the program fall below 90% of the cost of the program. This would mean an estimated 7,000 New Hampshire residents receiving opioid treatment medication through Medicaid would lose access to it. At this month's event, health care providers emphasized that funding substance use disorder treatment doesn't just help people deal with their drug issues, it also prevents those issues from turning into more costly issues later on. 'People who are not in treatment end up in medical care,' Greg Baxter, president and CEO of Elliot Health System, said. Meanwhile, fentanyl, a dangerous type of opioid drug, is ravaging communities across the U.S., including New Hampshire. Additionally, New Hampshire was among the hardest hit states in the opioid epidemic that began in the 2010s. From August 2022 to August 2023, over 110,000 Americans died from drug overdoses or poisonings, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency. In New Hampshire alone, there were 483 drug overdose deaths in 2022, the most recent data available, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. That's 36 per 100,000 Granite Staters.
