Hoag Hospital opens residential-style addiction treatment center

Hoag Hospital announced Wednesday that it has opened a 21-bed substance abuse treatment center at its Newport Beach campus to help recovering addicts as they transition from detox to residential living.

The facility, called SolMar Recovery, is the first such treatment center in California operated on the campus of an acute-care hospital. The center currently is caring for a handful of patients but will officially open to outside patients on Sept. 1, the hospital said.

SolMar is in a 10,000-square-foot building near Hoag’s inpatient detox unit, which supervises addicts during withdrawal from alcohol and prescription and other drugs. After detoxing, patients can go to SolMar for treatment in a residential-style environment before heading home.

“After detox, that addiction is still on fire,” said Marshall Moncrief, executive operations director of Hoag Addiction Treatment Centers. “For many patients, they have little chance of making it without a structured environment.”

SolMar offers 30-, 60- and 90-day treatment and accepts insurance. For patients who don’t have insurance, the cost of 30-day treatment is $18,500.

The center is opening at a time when addiction to prescription painkillers and street drugs like heroin is on the rise. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heroin use increased 63% nationwide over the past decade. Officials have attributed the increase to people addicted to prescription painkillers switching to heroin for a cheaper and more intense high.

The opening also comes as sober living homes for recovering addicts are facing increased scrutiny from local governments in Orange County. Residents in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach have long complained about noise, trash, crime and other problems that they attribute to the proliferation of sober living homes in their neighborhoods.

SolMar provides psychiatric services, emergency care and 24-hour security that smaller residential homes are often unequipped to offer, according to Moncrief.

Moncrief said that when people find out that a loved one has a substance abuse problem, often their first idea is to search the Internet for treatment centers. Faced with aggressively marketed for-profit treatment programs with various levels of capability, people generally have no idea how to select a good facility, he said.

“[SolMar] is completely different than rolling the dice and seeing what you would come up with on Google,” Moncrief said.

He said he expects the center will treat patients from all walks of life. Hoag’s existing treatment facilities often help working professionals who are struggling with alcohol or prescription dependence, he said. However, a growing number of young adults with opiate addictions seek treatment at Hoag, as do senior citizens who have become addicted to prescription medications, he said.