St. E’s Journey Recovery Center treats addiction on multiple fronts
Since it was started in 2017, the St. Elizabeth Physicians Journey Recovery Center has grown into a community resource that aims to treat addiction holistically.
The center now employs three full-time, board-certified, addiction medicine specialists, two nurse practitioners and an addiction psychiatrist to treat the growing problem of substance use disorder and addiction.
The center’s physicians use medications such as Suboxone and Vivitrol to help patients overcome the overwhelming impulse to abuse opioids and other drugs. But that’s just the beginning of the treatment journey.
“It’s more than just making sure they’ve got medically assisted treatment,” says Jordan Brown, therapeutic services director. “The other part of that is therapy services and support services.”
In addition to medical staff, the center also employs eight full-time therapists who are there to help patients work through mental health issues that may threaten their recovery. Case managers are also available to help patients find housing and transportation, connect them to insurance providers or legal counsel, and work with probation officers or help with many of the life tasks that recovering addicts can find overwhelming.
Peer support specialists, people in active recovery who have been trained to work with others just beginning their recovery journeys, are also on staff.
“I’m a firm believer that you have to have a foundation for recovery,” says the Center’s medical director, Dr. Teresa Koeller. “You can’t just give somebody medicine and expect that they’re going to get better. They need to have the tools to maintain long-term sobriety.”
The Crestview Hills center is busy responding to the epidemic of addiction that is affecting the region and the country. It has about 700 active patients currently enrolled, and, in 2021, the number of patient visits totaled about 31,000, Brown says.
The center also works with St. Elizabeth’s Baby Steps program, which works with pregnant women and new mothers who used drugs during their pregnancies. Through the program, “They feel supported, not judged,” Koeller says. Center staff also work with the jails in Kenton, Campbell and Boone counties to take care of their inmates who are pregnant.
The center’s professionals are also collaborating in a relatively new program called the Lift Up Project. St. Elizabeth Healthcare received a $2.4 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to connect people with substance use disorders to resources to help them build careers.
The center partners with the Life Learning Center, the Kentucky Career Center and other organizations to assess career skills and connect them with education, training and employment opportunities.
For many in recovery, simply making it through the day without using is the goal. Through this program, they are asked to imagine a career for themselves and to take steps to realize their ambitions.
“We try to lift them up to become much greater, much more than they imagined they could be,” Brown says.
“Our goal is not just to help patients with addiction, but to heal the patient so they can live the life they always thought they could live,” Koeller says. “Our goal is to help prepare the whole person.”
