CLEVELAND — News 5 is following through on opioid and drug addiction and the help available.
A new option on Cleveland’s West Side aims to redefine the approach to addiction treatment and remove barriers to getting help.
“People are dying,” said Dr. Elena Yanchar, chief of psychiatry at The Centers. “People are dying at numbers they shouldn’t be. People are suffering, and we have treatment.”
The Centers opened WinMAT in March, a walk-in medication-assisted treatment clinic.
They offer same-day evaluation and personalized treatment plans for addiction medicine, which include a range of medication-assisted treatment plans with Suboxone, Sublocade, and Vivitrol.
They also say there is an on-site pharmacy to streamline the process further.
You will find the WinMAT at The Center’s location in Gordon Square at 5209 Detroit Ave.
Yanchar says they’ve been offering these services for years, but not on a walk-in basis. She says it’s a much-needed service in Cleveland.
She says this will ensure help is available when needed most without barriers of wait times or pre-treatment requirements.
“I would tell anyone who is struggling with opiate addiction that I would assume you’ve already been through this system many times, and I would assume at times you’ve been treated poorly, and felt judged and shamed, and I hope that you come here,” she said. “We don’t do that. We won’t do that. We just want to help. I tell patients, ‘All I care about is keeping you alive.’”
She says as a society, we must do better at removing the stigma of addiction and treat it as the disease and medical condition it is.
People can bring themselves to the WinMAT. Yanchar also hopes it’ll bridge treatment gaps for people released from emergency rooms for an overdose or discharged from a detox facility.
The location also has a Hepatitis C treatment program, which Dr. Yanchar says is common among people struggling with opioid addiction.
They accept all insurance and have a sliding fee scale for people who can’t afford to pay, but they say they never turn anyone away.
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