The effectiveness of the alcohol center drug rehab combination

Integration of individual alcohol center drug rehab units offers a way of increasing effective delivery of addiction treatment services to patients and the wider community. The prevalence of dual diagnosis patients presenting addiction to both drugs and alcohol forms a constant feature for treatment practitioners from both sides of drug and alcohol divide.

There are two main arguments to support the integration of separate alcohol center drug rehab treatment providers. First, the effective deployment of scarce resources that makes the best use of the already thin resources available and secondly, the maximum extraction of value from the limited funding available. The first argument applies across the whole spectrum for alcohol center drug rehab providers, both public and private while the second argument deals primarily with the taxpayer funded sector.

Effective treatment delivery by an alcohol center drug rehab unit

It has long been recognized by addiction practitioners that a patient may present not one set of addictions but two (or more that need to be treated. This is the dual diagnosis patient, and they represent particular challenges to addiction treatment providers in order to maximize the possibility of a successful treatment outcome for the patient. The existence of more than one addiction in a patient requires the need for both alcohol and drug practitioners to collaborate in planning and executing a suitable treatment regime. It is often the case that one addiction fuels the other, or there is a common cause for both addictions and failure to treat one addiction successfully may lead to a relapse after an otherwise successful treatment for the other. There is probably no greater argument for the integration of the alcohol center drug rehab unit than the necessity to treat such patients in a holistic manner.

A combined alcohol center drug rehab facility allows for the cross fertilization of treatment methodologies and practice that can then be brought to bear on an individual patients requirements. The possibility of failing to recognize a dual diagnosis is minimized, which can lead to any treatment being of no value to the patient in the longer term. In cases of severe addiction, it may not be possible to treat both addictions at the same time and a strategy will need to be orchestrated by alcohol and drug specialists to work out the sequence of treatment and post treatment supervision and monitoring.

The combination of an alcohol center drug rehab facility is more effective when a patient first seeks assistance for their condition. Many sufferers fail to attend referrals to other services and the moment of opportunity to deliver treatment to the patient is lost, sometimes with horrendous results for the patient and others. It is a far more effective situation when drug and alcohol treatment teams are working together as an integrated unit rather than as separate entities.

From the delivery of treatment perspective, the alcohol center drug rehab combination demonstrates it’s supremacy over isolated facilities when approaching the often complicated and risky business of detoxification. Even in moderately addicted patients, withdrawal effects can be extremely debilitating and require careful medical supervision and monitoring. In the case of detoxifying a dual diagnosis patient, the risks to health and life become much higher requiring far more care in the delivery of this stage of the treatment process. The ability to deploy experts in both alcohol and drug detoxification, with their knowledge and experience of the interaction of addictive substances and the contra indications resulting from medical intervention are obvious.

The ability to deliver advice, care and support from one source also acts as a major factor in favor of integrating an alcohol center drug rehab facility. It is not only the patient that is affected by addictive behavior but family, friends and employers, all of whom may have a role to play in bringing about a successful outcome for the patient. The ability to provide on-stop services across the range of addiction conditions simplifies and eases what for many individuals is a deeply emotional situation. This is demonstrated when a recovering addict is discharged from a residential facility and is back in the environment that contributes to the addiction behavior in the first instance. The ability of a patient or their support network to deal with one set of professionals in the event of the initial treatment conditioning failing or indeed, a relapse occurring is critical to keeping a patient on track.

Effective use of financial resources by integrated alcohol center drug rehab facilities

There are obvious synergistic effects of combining two facilities into one, not least the savings in duplicating job positions and accommodation expense to house the alcohol center drug rehab facility. The impact of budgetary constraints and indeed, the cutting of budgets for many programs require that the taxpayer funded sector look at ways to reduce establishment costs and maintain the budget for delivery of treatment to patients.

Savings can be achieved by housing treatment providers, counselors and support staff in one location and avoid the need for duplicated staff performing administration duties at two otherwise separate facilities.

This argument may be impersonal and based upon hard financial constraints, however they are a fact of life for taxpayer funded programs. Such facilities have a duty to deliver the best treatment that they can provide to patients, but they also have a duty to the taxpayer to spend that money wisely.

The move towards an integrated approach to addiction treatment using the alcohol center drug rehab model has long been recognized and implicitly put into practice. The disparate nature of many programs, and the source of their funding, has led to different aspects of addiction treatment taking their own paths to a certain extent. Addiction treatment is important no matter what the type of addiction, and though different challenges may be presented by differing substance addictions, the principles underlying patient treatment remain the same. In short, more effort is needed to integrate disparate facilities into an integrated alcohol center drug rehab combination and remove the distinctions of alcohol and drugs.