Newsletter Signup
Stay up to date on all the latest news from Boston.com
A recovery clinic was set to open Monday in Taunton. Then a car crashed into it.
Essential services set to be offered by Pathway to Recovery in Taunton will now be delayed.
A day before an addiction recovery facility in Taunton was set to open, a car tore through its walls and scuttled the longstanding plans to provide care in a city that urgently needs it.
Just after 2 a.m. Sunday, Taunton Police responded to reports that a car had crashed into a commercial building, 59 Broadway, Chief Edward J. Walsh said in a statement. A Toyota Tundra traveling north on Broadway had swerved into three unoccupied parked cars before crashing into the front of the building.
A 22-year-old man was behind the wheel, Walsh said. He fled on foot, and police found him at his home. Neither the suspect nor anyone else was injured in the crash. He was evaluated and taken to a local hospital. An investigation is ongoing.
Advertisement:
“Taunton Police are taking steps to connect the driver with appropriate services,” Walsh reported.
Pathway to Recovery, located at 59 Broadway, was on the verge of opening its doors to the public. Photos taken at the scene show a large portion of the clinic’s street-facing wall destroyed, with debris littering what was once a clean lobby. Beth Fitzgerald, a nurse practitioner who co-owns Pathway to Recovery, told The Boston Globe that the opening could be delayed by months.
Staff members that were set to work at the clinic will likely try telehealth or potentially rent another space while repairs are made, Fitzgerald told the Globe.
Advertisement:
“We’ll continue to provide services. We don’t care if we’re in a cardboard box,” she told the paper.
There were a total of 2,357 confirmed and estimated opioid-related overdose deaths in Massachusetts in 2022, the most ever reported in the state. Overdose deaths rose 2.5% from 2021 to 2022, according to state data.
In Taunton, there were at least 28 opioid-related overdose deaths in 2022, according to a semiannual report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. This figure is down from 42 overdose deaths in 2021, but is still more than many communities experienced last year.
Other treatment options are disappearing from the city. Earlier this year, Morton Hospital announced plans to close its 32-bed substance use treatment facility effective June 27. The DPH held a community hearing in May where officials, advocates, and nurses expressed their strong opposition to the plans. The DPH subsequently determined that the services were “necessary for preserving access and health status within the Hospital’s service area.”
Steward Health Care, which owns Morton, was ordered to submit a detailed plan of how it intended to mitigate the negative impact of the closure. State Sen. Marc Pacheco wrote a scathing letter to the DPH in response.
Advertisement:
“The bottom line is — at the end of the day, ‘essential’ ought to actually mean ‘essential.’ If you call the service ‘essential’ and allow it to be eliminated, either use a different word or bring an end to this cruel charade,” he wrote.
Steward is aware that the decision “will affect the Taunton community,” according to filings reviewed by the Globe. The company was preparing to move its detox clinic to Carney Hospital in Dorchester. But Steward rescinded that application and plans to relocate to Dorchester remain up in the air, the Massachusetts Nurses Association said in June.
Also contributing to a lack of services is the fact that, earlier this year, the owner of a chain of clinics including one in Taunton was charged with health care fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering and obstruction.
Prosecutors said Recovery Connections Centers of America, Inc. “operated a chain of addiction treatment centers but failed to provide the patients with the required counseling sessions and treatment, while simultaneous billing Medicare, Medicaid and other health care payors for 45-minute counseling sessions on a routine basis even though the sessions were not more than 15 minutes, and often only 5-10 minutes or less.”
Advertisement:
To Fitzgerald, Sunday’s crash was another highly unfortunate development in the ongoing fight to get people the help they need.
“We were just devastated by this,” she told the Globe. “It’s just another blow in the opioid epidemic.”
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com