Tri-Cities recovery center moves closer to reality. Opioid lawsuit money will help
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The breakthroughs keep coming for the Tri-City area’s soon-to-be-realized mental health and recovery facility, with construction set to begin by fall.
The Benton Franklin Behavioral Health Advisory Committee recently discussed the need for a new name, which will eventually go on the building, and a proposed joint agreement by local municipalities to help fund the facility with settlement money from opioid lawsuits.
The facility will use a design-build process, which means once designs reach a certain threshold they can begin building the facilities. Benton County Deputy Administrator Matt Rasmussen told the Herald that they expect to hit that point around August.
The old Kennewick General Hospital building will be used for inpatient residential substance use treatment, while a facility in the old Welch’s Juice plant will be used for crisis stabilization, secure withdrawal, 23-hour observation.
The committee also is looking at the feasibility of a sobering center, which could open by the end of the year, but a location and provider hasn’t been decided for that yet.
The committee is made up of local elected officials and county employees, mental health and addiction professionals, first responders and citizens.
New facility name
As they got closer to work beginning, it became apparent to the committee that they were going to need to decide on a new name before signs are created for the facilities.
They’re looking for a new name because the one they had been using, Two Rivers Behavioral Health Center, was too similar to an existing mental health business, Three Rivers Therapy.
That business, which is on Clearwater Avenue in Kennewick, was registered with the state in 2015. There is also a Twin Rivers Community Facility in Richland that specializes in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT).
Several new names were proposed, but the one the committee liked most was Columbia River Regional Recovery Center.
That name was picked because it includes “regional” in the title to highlight the broader effort. They also wanted to avoid using a number of rivers because of the prevalence of businesses in the area also using similar naming.
Another selling point was that the name could be shortened to an acronym for the website, C3RC. They wanted to ensure that connecting to services was as easy as possible.
Benton County will now have their legal team take a look at the details to determine what needs to be done to make the change happen. The committee may continue to use Two Rivers on paperwork that’s tied to existing grant funding, and eventually transition over to the new name.
They also left open the possibility of having separate names for the two facilities to help distinguish which services each provides.
New funding
When Franklin County Commissioners learned what the county would be receiving as settlement for an opioid lawsuit, it became apparent that the sum wasn’t enough to move the needle on its own.
At a recent meeting the commissioners discussed the payout, about $27,000 a year over the next 17 years for one lawsuit, as the first two payments were received. They also expect a similar amount total for several other lawsuits. That would barely register as a drop in the bucket for most local governments.
The money also has restrictions on what it can be used for. So Franklin County joined Benton County, the city of Kennewick and more than a dozen other local municipalities that were party to the lawsuit, in an effort to combine the money in a meaningful way.
The solution is the Opioid Abatement Council, which will be administered through Greater Columbia Behavioral Health.
Yakima and Benton counties will receive the largest sums out of the 19 participating cities and counties. Benton County estimated it will be receiving about $121,000 annually. The Yakima Herald reported Yakima County is looking at $4.1 million total.
A portion of the combined total from the 19 participants will be used to help pay for the recovery center. It’s unclear how much they’ll receive annually as the details of the effort are still being worked out, but Rasmussen estimated it will be hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
The Opioid Abatement Council can use the money to help pay for addiction treatment and prevention services, mental health and recovery initiatives, outreach efforts and more.
Contract updates
Contract negotiations for service providers are also moving along.
Comprehensive Healthcare is currently working to build an initial contract for providing most of the services for the facilities, and will begin negotiations with the committee next month.
The committee also expecting information about the potential creation of an emergency services team that will respond with police and EMTs in the area for behavioral health and addiction related calls.
At its last meeting the committee put together a team to look into what it would take to build and fund a team that works with first responders during peak hours daily in the Tri-Cities area.
