THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2022 A7
OUTREACH EFFORTS WILL PLAY A CENTRAL
ROLE IN ADDICTION TREATMENT PROGRAMS
BY ZACK DEMARS
The Bulletin
BestCare, which has pro-
vided drug addiction treat-
ment in the region since 1997,
is set to receive the largest
share of the more than $15
million distributed to Central
Oregon under Measure 110
for addiction services. That’s
about $5.5 million for De-
schutes County, plus another
$2 million for services in Jef-
ferson County and $1.5 mil-
lion for Crook County.
Barrett Hamilton is lead-
ing one of BestCare’s biggest
Measure 110 endeavors: A
new Bend “engagement cen-
ter,” where people with addic-
tion can get assistance with
whatever they need to stay
safe, from basic needs to em-
ployment assistance, to rapid
access to BestCare’s outpatient
addiction treatment services
right across the hall.
Prior to the Measure 110
expansion, Hamilton offered
similar services out of a van in
Redmond.
“This will be a bigger ver-
sion of that,” Hamilton said.
“This will be a place they can
come, and we’ll just try to re-
move the barriers that are
keeping them stuck in their
addiction and when they
realize ‘OK, I need detox or I
need treatment or I need men-
tal health,’ we can act right
then.”
The idea of relying on out-
reach and engagement to get
people into treatment rather
than law enforcement or pun-
ishment appeals to Hamilton’s
own path to addiction recov-
ery.
“I was in active addiction
for 27 years. I’ve been in jail,
in prison, and it never stopped
me,” Hamilton said. “But what
has worked in those 27 years: I
was sober two different times.
... both times I went to treat-
ment and figured it out. This
time I didn’t make the same
mistakes I made last time.”
BestCare has some experi-
ence offering people with ad-
diction a range of services in
hopes of helping them on the
path to recovery. The orga-
Continued from previous page
About 70% of new Oregon pa-
tients in October were able to be
seen within two days of their ini-
tial call (though the company says
it wants that figure to be 100% for
services funded by Measure 110).
About 60% of the company’s Or-
egon patients remain in its care
six months later — double the na-
tional average, the company said.
Another treatment provider
will be using Measure 110 funds
to expand into the Deschutes
County Jail.
Ideal Option is receiving about
$1.2 million of the Deschutes
County allocation to expand its
community outreach program,
offer a clinic for accessing addic-
tion treatment medication at a
Safeway in Bend and, if they can
find a location to rent, open a
Dean Guernsey/The Bulletin
BestCare Community Engagement Team Care Manager Barrett Ham-
ilton, right, works with Wiley Dave during outreach on Hunnell Road
in Bend in early November.
nization has operated an en-
gagement team in St. Charles
hospitals’ emergency floors for
a little over two years.
The premise of that work
is fairly simple: Hospital so-
cial workers call the BestCare
team whenever someone
comes into the emergency
room with a drug- or alco-
hol-related issue. An en-
gagement team staff member
meets the individual at their
bedside and walks through
new clinic in Redmond.
The organization also plans to
begin offering its services in part-
nership with the medical staff at
the Deschutes County jail. The
Deschutes County Sheriff’s Of-
fice doesn’t have a precise esti-
mate but, even with the decrim-
inalization of drug possession,
many people in the jail do have
some kind of substance use issue.
(Statewide estimates offer some
idea of what that population
might be: About half of the state’s
prison population has an addic-
tion of some kind.)
Ideal Option has tried the in-
jail treatment program before. In
Benton County, in Eastern Wash-
ington, 68% of inmates who were
referred to Ideal Option over the
course of a year went to their ap-
pointment after being released.
what the person might need.
One learning curve of oper-
ating that program is defining
what “success” looks like for
an individual client, accord-
ing to Kristina Van Alstine,
the program’s case manager.
While people might not ini-
tially want to get into addic-
tion treatment, the outreach
efforts build connections so
those people have resources to
do so if they wish, she said.
“I think, if people can get
Half of those people were re-
tained in treatment for a month
or more and, for the 1,389 indi-
viduals served by the program
and released from jail, there had
only been 121 new charges filed.
“If we can use the medica-
tion assisted treatment to take
away the cravings for whatever
substance they’re using, it easier
for them to not go out seeking
the drugs, or whatever they’re
addicted to, and they can start
hopefully having more of a nor-
mal life,” said Sgt. Jayson Janes,
a spokesperson for the sheriff’s
office.
“In the long run, that’s what we
want, is people to kick their ad-
diction and be able to live a good
life.”
█
Reporter: 541-617-7814,
zdemars@bendbulletin.com
away from the black and white
thinking of what behavioral
health is and look at the gray
and see that it’s not the same
for everybody, I think that
maybe we will have success in
taking care of the substance
use epidemic,” a Alstine said.
Since it started, the engage-
ment team has seen about
600 people in the emergency
room, Van Alstine said. A lit-
tle over half of those had some
kind of further relationship
with the BestCare team. For
some, that was as simple as
follow-up phone calls or peer
support meetings. For about
9% of those who engaged, that
was a connection to medica-
tion supported recovery ser-
vices, 16% received access to
detox services, and about 37%
received some kind of sub-
stance use treatment.
For BestCare Executive
Director Rick Treleaven, the
project of Measure 110 is a
statewide “social experiment”
in pivoting from a historically
criminal-justice-oriented re-
sponse to addiction.
“This will be a place they
can come, and we’ll just try
to remove the barriers that
are keeping them stuck in
their addiction and when
they realize ‘OK, I need
detox or I need treatment
or I need mental health,’ we
can act right then.”
— Barrett Hamilton, leading one
of BestCare’s biggest Measure
110 endeavors
“And so we’re going to stop
that, and we’re going to set up
a system of engagement and
outreach and harm reduction
to that population with the
hopes of decreasing the dam-
age of drugs and alcohol and
hopefully engaging a certain
percentage of those people
into recovery-based services,”
Treleaven said.
█
Reporter: 541-617-7814,
zdemars@bendbulletin.com
Dean Guernsey/The Bulletin
Lisa Bradley, clinical manager of Healing Reins, with therapy horse Yukon on their ranch near
Tumalo last month. “He has a pretty different personality, he has many different shades,” Brad-
ley said of Yukon, who will be a part of the nonprofit’s new substance use disorder program.
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