EAST BREMERTON — The contractor tasked with establishing Kitsap’s first opioid treatment program has selected a location in East Bremerton and plans to open a methadone clinic there later this year.

BayMark Health Services, a for-profit treatment provider based in Texas, is currently renovating a building at 1550 Riddell Road in Redwood Plaza. The clinic is expected to open in early August, BayMark vice president of development Tom Schwallie said.

“The peninsula was an area that we targeted several years ago, that we thought wasn’t being properly served,” Schwallie said.

The clinic will provide medication-assisted treatment to people struggling with opioid addiction, like heroin. Treatment will include giving patients methadone — a medication that helps temper the effects of opioid withdrawal — as well as other medications clinically proven to treat opioid use disorder, like buprenorphine (Suboxone) and Vivitrol. Medication will be paired with counseling, case management and relapse prevention classes.

Salish Behavioral Health is the county agency that oversees mental health and substance-abuse contracts in the area. In 2017, the agency put out a request for proposals for a contractor to run an opioid treatment program. BayMark, which operates over 170 treatment clinics and serves about 50,000 patients a day nationwide, was the only company to respond.

Since then, BayMark has been searching for a suitable location for the clinic. The building on Riddell Road, formerly the home of Chips Casino, is centrally located, accessible by public transit and offers ample parking, Schwallie said.

BayMark estimates the clinic will be able to serve about 350 patients. The facility could handle more, Schwallie said, but BayMark is waiting to see what the demand will be like once the clinic opens.

BayMark is paying all the renovation costs. Patients without Medicaid or private insurance will be billed on a sliding scale. Salish Behavioral Health has some state funds to cover low-income patients without insurance.

Opioid treatment programs are heavily regulated by both state and federal law. If patients do well and comply with all the requirements of the program, they may be allowed to take the medication home, a BayMark representative wrote in a statement to the Kitsap Sun.

Until now, patients who used methadone to help fight addiction had to travel outside Kitsap to receive their medication. The state's Medicaid program spent $1.3 million in 2017 to shuttle 145 patients from Kitsap, Clallam and Jefferson counties to opioid treatment programs, the Kitsap Sun reported last year.

“Individuals that are currently in need of this service are traveling quite a distance and spending a good portion of their day in order to get their needs met,” Salish Behavioral Health administration Stephanie Lewis said. “I think the benefit is definitely having a local treatment provider to meet these citizens’ needs.”

Methadone can only be administered by an approved opioid treatment program. Taken daily, the medication helps prevent painful withdrawal symptoms without getting patients high.

“What we find is the recidivism rate of our patients is lowest when you have patients utilizing methadone along with counseling,” Schwallie said.

Length of treatment will vary depending on the patient and severity of the addiction, Schwallie said. Some people have been successfully weaned off methadone, while for others, it can be a lifelong treatment.

“There are many paths to the top of the mountain as far as having patients get better,” Schwallie said.

The treatment hasn’t been without its critics. An attempt to bring an opioid treatment program to Bremerton in 2011 failed after the City Council enacted a six-month moratorium on methadone treatment facilities.

Schwallie said the clinic will have tight security, including cameras and a high-quality safe for storing medications. Patients will enter the clinic from one direction, take their medication in a private room, and exit from a different direction. BayMark expects the busiest time to be between 5:30 and 7:30 a.m. The clinic will be open six days a week.

Kitsap Public Health District, while not directly involved in funding or running the clinic, applauded the addition of a treatment program for opioid use in the county.

“The availability of behavioral health services, especially opioid use disorder treatment services, has increased tremendously over the past two years, but our residents still face challenges in accessing specialty opioid use disorder treatment services,” health officer Dr. Susan Turner said in a statement to the Kitsap Sun. “We are very pleased that the new opioid treatment program will address this priority need in Kitsap.”

Other providers in Kitsap County — including Peninsula Community Health Services — offer medications to treat opioid use disorder, but not methadone. The Kitsap County Jail also launched a treatment program this year in which patients can be prescribed Suboxone or Vivitrol.

BayMark plans to reach out to neighbors and other public agencies about six weeks before the clinic opens. A public meeting will also be held to talk about any concerns, Schwallie said.