New Law Will Require Addiction Treatment Providers To Register With The Orange County Health Care Agency
The new registry will include the centers' addresses, details of services provided and accepted methods of payment for each location; the identity of each owner, director, partner and officer; and the identity of each affiliated entity and affiliated facility.
Orange County Register:
County Passes Registry For Some Drug Rehab Centers To Crack Down On Abuses
In what could be a first in California, licensed addiction treatment providers will be required to register annually with the Orange County Health Care Agency – and disclose webs of related businesses, such as urine- and blood-testing labs, pharmacies, real-estate-holding companies that manage sober living homes and the like. For now, the new law — approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors after an animated debate — will apply only to unincorporated areas of the county, where just some of the county’s 472 state-licensed addiction treatment programs are located. But the District Attorney’s office, which proposed the new law, wants to take it county-wide. (Sforza and Saavedra, 10/16)
In other news on the crisis —
Stateline:
How Fentanyl Changes The Opioid Equation
More than a decade into the opioid epidemic, illicit fentanyl and related synthetic drugs are now driving the nation’s spiraling overdose death toll. Involved in nearly half of the roughly 200 U.S. drug overdose deaths every day, fentanyl appears to be here to stay. ...As governors in the hardest-hit New England, Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states call for intensified law enforcement efforts and stiffer penalties for fentanyl dealers, public health officials are saying this latest drug scourge underscores the urgent need to get more people into treatment, particularly those who use heroin. (Vestal, 10/17)