A First Nations leader wants to know who is benefitting from the growing number of methadone clinics in Thunder Bay.
“There has to be some regulation in terms of how doctors are running these clinics and the scrutiny that should be there, I don’t think is there right now,” said Nishnawbe Aski Nation deputy grand chief Alvin Fiddler.
Thunder Bay, with a population of about 110,000, has seven clinics that provide methadone to people as a treatment for addictions to injection drugs. Toronto, with a population of about 4.5 million people, lists 11 methadone clinics.
Methadone ‘big business’
Fiddler says the numbers don’t add up, but the billings for doctors who oversee methadone prescriptions do.
“Running a methadone clinic is big business,” he said. “It generates a lot of revenue.”
A doctor can bill up to $10 thousand a year to supervise methadone treatment for one patient, Fiddler said, and the treatment can go on for years.
“We’ve heard that clients that were on this program 10 or 11 years ago are given the same dose today,” he said. “The effectiveness of the methadone program is under question.”
Fiddler wants the College of Physicians and Ontario’s Ministry of Health to review methadone treatment.
Health minister responds
But provincial Health Minister Eric Hoskins said he doesn’t believe his fellow physicians are motivated by money.
Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins says doctors setting up methadone clinics because of “a better understanding of just how serious this problem is in the province.” (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)
“I think if anything is driving them into the field of mental health and addictions management it’s a better understanding of just how serious this problem is in the province,” Hoskins said. “That doesn’t mean that’s the situation in 100 per cent of the cases but I’m confident that our physicians are driven by what they see as their contribution to their local community and wanting to make a difference in the health and well-being of the population.”
Hoskins said “a significant portion” of the province’s increased health care budget will go towards the Aboriginal population and be directed towards “prevention and addictions management.”
“Nowhere in the province is that more acute than in places like the Thunder Bay region,” he said.
Fiddler agrees that addictions are a serious concern but he questions the reliance on methadone, alone, as a treatment.
“There there has to be supports,” he said. “What we’re finding right now is that those supports that are supposed to help a client aren’t there in Thunder Bay. They’re severely lacking.”
