CHARLESTON – Treatment programs across the state will receive more than $20 million in funding to be to keep the drug addiction treatment programs running.
The nine programs are Living Free Ohio Valley in Wheeling; Mountaineer Behavioral Health in Martinsburg; St. Joseph Recovery Center in Parkersburg; Westbrook Health Services in Parkersburg; Valley HealthCare System in Morgantown; West Virginia University Research Corp. in Morgantown; Marshall University Physician & Surgeons in Huntington; WestCare West Virginia in Culloden; and Southern West Virginia Treatment Through Recovery Continuum, which includes FMRS Health Systems, Seneca Health Services and the Southern Highlands Community Mental Health Center, all in Beckley.
The $20.8 million was set aside from settlements that were reached earlier this year with drug distribution companies.
Each program will receive somewhere between $1 million and $3 million for additional treatment beds; long-term treatment; long-term outpatient care; to open new programs or to provide residential treatment services for pregnant and postpartum women
The state plans to use Medicaid funds to sustain the facilities that are adding treatment beds.
The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources received applications for grant funds from 23 different organizations.
Last April, the Legislature passed a bill to take $24 million from the settlements to expand facilities across the state. The bill, HB 2428, directed the DHHR to make extra treatment beds available by July 2018.