Central Health to spend millions on opioid abatement

Central Health, Travis County’s hospital district serving low-income residents, is due to receive over $3 million from the state’s opioid abatement trust fund this spring. An allocation of nearly $10 million more – largely “front-loaded” – will be disbursed over the next 18 years. 

In their Strategic Planning Committee Meeting on March 6, administrators, medical staff, therapeutic professionals and case workers from Central Health and associated health care organizations reviewed the full scope of their ongoing opioid abatement efforts in light of their models of care – and took the issue of future budget priorities to task. 

Central Health accomplished its most significant actions in Fiscal Year 2023 by enriching its existing partnerships.

With Central Health’s support, Integral Care has seen an average of 26,000 patients annually for things like inpatient psychiatry, intensive outpatient, outpatient clinical services, psychiatric emergency care and case management visits, according to Central Health vice president of operations Cynthia Gallegos.

In October 2023, Central Health awarded Integral Care a $7 million contract to expand its psychiatric emergency services and outpatient clinical care capacities after a budget crisis left the health authority on the brink of massive layoffs. Integral Care reports that it has since employed the funds to serve 3,000 unique clients across 16,000 encounters.

Central Health offers direct clinical services, administers low-income medical insurance coverage, operates entities including CommUnityCare Health Centers and Sendero Health Plans, and manages partnerships with entities including Dell Medical School and Lone Star Circle of Care. Integral Health operates under a similar charter but explicitly provides services for mental illness, substance use disorders, and intellectual and developmental disability. Integral Care’s nine-member volunteer Board of Trustees is appointed by Central Health, the city of Austin and Travis County.

Central Health estimates that CommUnityCare addiction medicine clinics have provisioned holistic addiction treatment services (including suboxone and buprenorphine access) to nearly 2,000 patients annually. 

Lone Star Circle Of Care provided just shy of 2,800 people with behavioral health therapy and psychiatric services in the prior year; People’s Community Clinic provisioned behavioral health therapy and counseling to 1,200; and the SIMS Foundation offered substance use disorder services, psychiatric services and behavioral health therapy to 400 Austin musicians.  

In FY 22, Central Health forged a new partnership with the organization Community Medical Services to expand methadone and suboxone treatment to community patients, further expanding access to methadone in partnership with the organization Addiction and Psychotherapy Services. 

Dr. John Weems at CommUnityCare emphasized that new technologies and simple interventions have the power to make massive differences in outreach. 

“Telemedicine has probably been the most important innovation in addiction medicine in the last five years,” he said, “and we utilize telehealth to keep our patients engaged. We’ve expanded services significantly and soon that’s going to include evening hours at our clinic.”

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license. This story has been changed since publication to correct an error. 

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