By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
The township Zoning Board of Adjustment spent more than three hours listening to testimony from the chief nursing officer and an administrator at the Sunrise Detox drug and alcohol detoxification center last week, but ran out of time to complete the application.
More than 100 people filled the Township Council meeting room at the Dec. 15 meeting, which was the second in a series of public hearings on the application. The zoning board and the applicant — John Simone, who is a principal in the Simone Investment Group LLC — agreed to continue the public hearing at a special meeting Jan. 19 at 7:30 p.m.
Mr. Simone, whose company owns the property at 100 Federal City Road, is seeking a use variance to permit the Florida-based Sunrise Detox to open a 38-bed residential detoxification center in one of three office buildings at the office park. A use variance is needed because a residential substance abuse detoxification center is not a permitted use in the Professional Office zone.
Last week’s public hearing was punctuated by questions — sometimes adversarial — from audience members, who expressed concern about the safety of the adjacent Traditions and Federal Hill neighborhoods and also questioned the cost of the program.
The zoning board members listened as Linda Burns, the chief nursing officer for the two detoxification centers — one in Florida and another in Stirling, in northern New Jersey — explained how Sunrise Detox operates and how it differs from a drug and alcohol addiction treatment center.
Sunrise Detox is a medical detoxification center and not a treatment center, Ms. Burns said. Once a patient is “medically stabilized,” the patient is sent to a drug and alcohol treatment center for help, she said.
Referrals to Sunrise Detox may come from drug and alcohol treatment facilities. Doctors, hospitals, social workers and insurance companies may refer patients to Sunrise Detox for medical detoxification — the first step in treating the physical and psychological aspects of drug and alcohol addiction, she added.
Patients may suffer from sweats, chills and involuntary muscle twitches, Ms. Burns said. They may have high blood pressure, an increased heart rate and stomach or leg cramps. The physician will put the patient on medication to stabilize his or her condition, she said.
Most addicts who seek treatment are “desperate” for help, she said. Sunrise Detox makes it a point to admit only patients are willing to cooperate in the medical detoxification process, which takes an average of 5.8 days, she said.
“We do not take walk-ins,” she said, referring to would-be patients who walk into the office to seek help. Would-be patients who have psychiatric issues, as well as criminals who are referred for substance abuse treatment by the court system, also are not accepted.
The admissions process begins with a telephone interview by a trained intake specialist, Ms. Burns said. The prospective patient is asked about prior drug and alcohol use, whether he or she has had seizures, whether they are suicidal or homicidal, and for other psychological problems.
The information is reviewed by a staff physician, who decides whether to admit the person, Ms. Burns said. Arrangements are made to transport the patient to Sunrise Detox, and the information is verified upon the patient’s arrival.
Sunrise Detox does not conduct background checks on patients, although such checks are conducted on staffers, she said. The company’s attorneys are investigating whether it would be legal to conduct a check because of privacy laws and whether that information could be used to refuse to accept a patient, she said.
Once patients are admitted, they receive medication — suboxone for opiate drug addiction and other medication for alcohol addiction — and counseling, Ms. Burns said. They attend individual and group counseling sessions, and treatment includes an educational component, she said.
“The goal is to provide a successful outcome — not just an outcome,” Ms. Burns said. Sunrise Detox measures its success by the number of patients who continue treatment at specialized drug and alcohol treatment centers, she said, adding that about 95 percent of patients take that step.
Ms. Burns also outlined the differences between a residential medical detoxification program and an outpatient facility. The staff, which includes medical professionals and counselors, keeps tabs on the clients at a residential detoxification center around the clock. A client in an out-patient facility may go home at night to a setting that does not support his or her effort to stop taking drugs or alcohol, she said.
But the medical detoxification program at Sunrise Detox is expensive. It costs $1,700 per day, Ms. Burns said. While some insurance companies pick up the tab, other patients pay for all or part of the bill out of pocket, she said. On occasion, Sunrise Detox subsidizes a portion of the cost.
Patients range in age from 30 to 80 years old, and the majority are professionals such as doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers and athletes, Ms. Burns said. Some are entrepreneurs. The college-educated clients are often addicted to prescription drugs or alcohol.
When Federal Hill resident William Eggert asked about the type of clientele that would seek admission to Sunrise Detox and whether they could have violent tendencies, Ms. Burns said she spent several weeks living at the Stirling facility, and that if she felt unsafe, she would not have stayed there. In the six years that she has worked for the company, neither a patient nor staff member has been injured, she added. She also said that patients are not allowed into the kitchen, where they would have access to knives.
There was only enough time left, after Ms. Burns completed her testimony, for the executive director of the Stirling facility to testify to the need for Sunrise Detox to open another facility in New Jersey.
Warren Connelly, who is the executive director for Sunrise Detox’s New Jersey facility in Stirling, said the decision was made to open that facility because of the large number of New Jersey residents — 206 patients — who traveled to the Florida facility for help in 2009 alone, he said. The Florida center has been open since 2004.
The Stirling facility, which has 21 beds, opened last year and has treated 435 New Jersey clients of the more than 600 patients who have walked through its doors, Mr. Connelly said. Most of those patients live in northern New Jersey, and there is a need for a residential detoxification center in central New Jersey, he said.
There was not enough time for Mr. Connelly to complete his testimony, so he will present additional information at the zoning board’s special meeting Jan. 19. Additional experts are scheduled to present more testimony.