City Council’s Kensington Caucus convenes hearing on access to drug rehab amid conflicting information

KENSINGTON (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia City Council’s Kensington Caucus is exploring ways to make drug rehab treatment more accessible as part of its effort to clean up the drug-ravaged neighborhood.

In that vein, Council member Quetcy Lozada convened a hearing at Rock Ministries in Kensington on Thursday out of frustration with conflicting information about the availability of treatment for addiction. Health officials and providers say there are beds available for those seeking treatment, but people seeking treatment complain they can’t get access to them.

Jefferson Doctor Phil Durney said a large part of the problem is the mismatch between the level of care in the available beds and the complex medical needs of many of those seeking treatment.

“When patients are coming in with really severe infections, life-threatening infections or severe debility — they can’t walk, they can’t move — that’s when this mismatch occurs,” said Durney.

He and colleague Dr. Chris Martin, testified that this is often the case in Philadelphia with the drug xylazine, which causes massive wounds and infections and is found in almost every street drug.

City health officials said there are currently 120 rehab beds available, but most are for those who need minimal medical care. Only three were available for high-need patients.

Behavioral Health Commissioner Marquita Williams said her department has greatly expanded the number of beds and is working to reduce barriers, but clearly more is needed.

Megan Reed, who also works at Jefferson and specializes in harm reduction, said there are other obstacles like location, language barriers and hours of waiting at intake centers for officials to consider.

“This would be arduous for anyone but for someone going through withdrawal it’s intolerable,” she said. “We should roll out the red carpet when someone is ready to get treatment, not put up obstacles for them to get in it.”

Recommendations made at the meeting included creating a dashboard to make it easy to find available beds and to have housing waiting for patients getting discharge to prevent relapses.