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October 4, 2017

85-bed, high-level detox center planned in Kent

By John Stearns

A Connecticut company has applied to the state Office of Health Care Access to open an 85-bed inpatient detoxification and intensive treatment facility in Kent, north of Danbury, and make it the state’s only free-standing level 4 detoxification provider in Connecticut outside of a hospital.

Level 4 is the highest level of detoxification management and includes IV administration.

Birch Hill Recovery Center LLC, which registered in the state in January, hopes to open the facility by Jan. 2019 as a Level 3.7 center, with Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT), but not IVs, and transition to Level 4 in a year. The center would treat alcohol and substance abuse among adults 18 to 64.

By offering Level 4.0 detoxification, Birch Hill will offer a more affordable alternative to acute care hospitalization within a therapeutic setting so recovery can begin sooner, with no time lapses between detoxification and intensive rehabilitation, the company’s Certificate of Need filing says.

The location for the proposed facility is a 60,000-square-foot former skilled nursing facility on 11.5 acres that Birch Hill will renovate. Tenant improvements and furnishings are projected to cost $3 million with a contingency budget of $300,000.

Birch Hill proposes to operate 27 inpatient detoxification beds and 58 intensive treatment beds. Connecticut only has about 180 to 200 detox beds that are Level 3.7, according to Ari Raskas, managing partner of Birch Hill.

“We have been well received by people in the healthcare treatment and job-seeking community throughout the state,” he said, expecting about 100 jobs. “We’re going to create a lot of jobs, we’re going to provide treatment for people who are really in need.”

Birch Hill members include business and healthcare professionals “who were moved by the explosive growth of opioid abuse in Connecticut and its relative lack of dedicated detoxification and intensive treatment beds,” the CON says.

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