City sees fourth fatal heroin overdose in two months

WILMINGTON — Another person is dead after overdosing on heroin. This makes four fatalities in Wilmington in two months which police are aware of.

There are only a few treatment facilities in our area, two of which are privately funded.

The Tri-County Detox Center at New Hanover Regional Medical Center is a community detox center. The facility has 18 beds, 11 or 12 beds of which are generally occupied.

Doctors who work with the center say there are occasions where they have not had enough room to take on new patients, but those patients are not denied care, they are just taken somewhere else.

The Wilmington Treatment Center and Metro Clinic are both privately funded. Psychiatrist Dr. Patrick Martin says luckily, both places do accept insurance.

Martin said, “For a while, the coverage for chemical dependency was very good, then for a while insurance companies would try and save money by cutting chemical dependency benefits, but that is reversing now.”

If a person isn’t able to stay clean after being treated however, most insurance companies won’t pay for treatment a second time.

A 40-day stay in a substance abuse treatment center can cost up to $40,000.