DICKINSON, N.Y. — Syracuse Behavioral Healthcare has begun the process of hiring 49 doctors, nurses, administrative workers and others for a substance-abuse treatment center it will open in April, in Dickinson, just north of Binghamton.
The center, in what had been Building 1 of the Broome Developmental Center, will serve as a medically supervised treatment center for patients with substance-abuse disorders, Kathleen Gaffney-Babb, SBH’s executive VP and chief operating officer, tells BJNN.
“There will be 50 beds of medically supervised withdrawal,” Gaffney-Babb says.
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That means some patients may arrive intoxicated or suffering from withdrawal symptoms requiring medication. “It’s what many people think of as detox,” she says.
After treatment that averages three to five days, patients will be linked to the appropriate care, she adds.
To run the facility, SBH has started recruiting a new staff, everything from doctors, psychiatrists, registered nurses and LPNs to directors, property maintenance workers and a receptionist. Gaffney-Babb says the plan is to staff the center with hires from Broome and surrounding counties, rather than bring staff in from SBH facilities in Syracuse and elsewhere.
SBH operates two 25-bed medically supervised treatment centers in Syracuse and Rochester. The agency was founded in 1920 and has more than 350 employees.
The need for a medically supervised treatment center for patients with substance-abuse disorders in Broome County was clear enough that the county put out a request for proposals to organizations able to handle the work, Gaffney-Babb explains. SBH applied and will lease the building, a residential facility that has been vacant for some time, and operate it with funding from the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, she says.
The facility will be able to treat those with different substance-abuse issues, but Gaffney-Babb says awareness of the current opioid-abuse crisis was a catalyst for development of the facility. According to statistics from the Broome County website, opioid-involved deaths were up by at least 50 percent in the first half of this decade.
An information session for prospective employees will be held this Thursday at the Koffman Southern Tier Incubator in Binghamton from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Broome-Tioga Workforce will be holding a career fair Jan. 25 from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Jeffrey P. Kraham Broome County Library in Binghamton. Health-care employers, including SBH, will be participating and conducting on-site interviews.
Contact McChesney at cmcchesney@cnybj.com.
