Year in review: Behavioral health gets attention, but services grow more scarce

It was late November 2015 when the detox facility in Taos unexpectedly closed its doors. More than a year later, Taos is still without a facility.

While local elected officials have given more attention to the issue of behavioral health, other essential tools have left the area, meaning Taos and the surrounding region is more strapped for services than ever before.

Behavioral health is a big topic of conversation in Northern New Mexico, as New Mexico has been at the top of the list for opioid overdose deaths for two decades. Taos County’s overdose rate sits above both the national and state averages. During one week in August, emergency responders saved six people from overdosing.

Beyond the loss of life and economic impacts of opioid addiction, the health crisis “is a burden on health care, law enforcement and our detention resources,” Taos County Manager Leandro Cordova said over the summer.

After months of discussion about the need to declare a public health emergency around addiction, Taos County commissioners did so in June.

The resolution is largely symbolic, serving as a statement that county officials consider opioid addiction and its far-ranging impacts a top priority. Such resolutions are also tools used to lobby for more funding.

“When counties like Taos and Río Arriba take steps that draw further attention to the need to address this crisis, it adds more support to my call for funding for treatment and prevention programs that can save the lives of people in our communities,” said U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján this summer.

The issue of opioid addiction was only exacerbated when Taos lost its detox center, an eight-bed facility run by Tri-County Community Services that shuttered after costly damage to a furnace. Tri-County was on the hook for repairs to the building located near Holy Cross Hospital, which is owned by the town of Taos.

Detox ranges from medical supervision for acute symptoms of withdrawal to residential and drop-in social service programs. It is considered to be a key tool in the regional efforts to fight heroin and prescription opioid addiction.

Throughout 2016, those in need of detox have had to travel across New Mexico in order to find it.

But the detox closure in November didn’t just affect Taos residents. The loss had ripple effects on services throughout Northern New Mexico, according to Ambrose Varos, executive director of Hoy Recovery in Española, a detox provider.

“Taos was the place to go in the region [to safely detox]. Before it closed, we referred people to Taos for these services,” he said. “That took a very important link off the chain.”

The Taos center was serving many people from Río Arriba County and other parts of Northern New Mexico.

For the past year, Varos and Taos-based providers have only been able to refer people to a handful of other detox facilities in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, which are often full and unable to readily accept new patients. Some of those clinics have closed or are planning to do so.

Town of Taos officials said in January they were looking to send out a formal request for a behavioral service provider to operate the detox center — the first step in getting detox back to Taos. But the town never issued that request.

Taos Mayor Dan Barrone said in August that the town didn’t have the staff to seek out a contractor to run a detox center, nor the money to maintain the building.

“It appears if the detox is to be reopened in Taos, it will need to be the county that leads the charge,” said Cordova at the time.

Indeed, county officials took steps to formulate a new plan to reopen the facility.

The initial plan looked promising because the mix of patients was delicately balanced in order to get the most traction out of local, state and federal funding. But in August, the plan fell apart when the state Department of Health announced no funding would be available for social detox, putting county officials and health care advocates back to square one.

Since that time, county management and Taos County Commissioner Tom Blankenhorn (the elected official who has mostly led the charge in these negotiations and was reelected to his position in November) reiterated the need and desire to reopen detox.

Blankenhorn told The Taos News Dec. 23 that getting the title for the building from the town of Taos is now the first step towards reopening the facility. Only then can the county secure a behavioral health provider to run it. The county is working to formally accept the building by late January.

The biggest challenge, Blankenhorn said, was that “there wasn’t too clear of a notion of what was required.”

“The goal of the county is not to just quickly reopen the detox center under the old broken system that helped lead to its closure. Instead we would prefer to work with the professionals in the field to build a new model that is sustainable over time to avoid wasting taxpayer dollars,” Cordova said.

Yet even as county officials make attempts at securing detox services in Northern New Mexico, other behavioral health services have crumbled.

It was announced last month that Valle del Sol, an Arizona-based behavioral health care contractor that took on New Mexico clients following a shake-up in the state’s behavioral health network in 2013, will cease operations in the state, including their Taos office.

“The closing of Valle del Sol, one of the last resources for affordable counseling… in Taos County, brings uncertainty and an unbearable stress on our community,” said Siena Sanderson, of Las Cumbers Community Services. “We need all hands on deck if we expect to fund the many resources we need… We can only hope the state works swiftly to replace this much needed service for our community,” she said.

One glimmer of hope in the story of dried-up resources is the recent signing of the "21st Century Cures Act" by President Barack Obama. The funding legislation puts nearly $6 billion into various medical initiatives, including $1 billion specifically for communities like those in Northern New Mexico that have suffered the brunt of the opioid addiction crisis.

Luján was part of a group of lawmakers who put forth a similar funding bill earlier this year. The legislation signed by Obama earlier this month incorporates most of the provisions from Luján’s bill.

However, that legislation is not a blank check. The state agencies and local providers will have to apply for the funding through the proper channels, meaning 2016 is finish off without the money needed to get a local detox center up and running.