With skyrocketing numbers of the heroin usage and deaths in South King County, officials are hoping to stem the tide with a new methadone clinic, set to open in Renton this year.

The new clinic, operated by Evergreen Treatment Services, is located in a suite at IDC Medical Plaza, 1412 SW 43rd Street and is projected to open in August.

“Evergreen Treatment Services offers medication-assisted treatment for adults with opioid usage disorder (people who are having problems with heroin and prescription opiates). We are experts and specialists in this kind of condition and treatment for the condition,” said Executive Director Molly Carney.

The clinic – which has capacity is 350 patients – will administer methadone and buprenorphine to patients, as well as provide counseling services, which, according to Carney, is a crucial part of treatment.

“[Patients] are required to engage in counseling with one of our counselors on site — those are licensed chemical dependency professionals,” he said. “Each patient is assigned a medical provider who monitors them through our program and determines what the proper medication dose is… Counseling is an important part of medication-assisted treatment. That’s why the ‘assisted treatment’ part is there.”

The clinic is also waiting to get approval to provide narcan kits to the patients who are in their services. Narcan, or also known as naloxone, is an opiate antidote that can reverse an overdose.

According to Assistant Division Director of King County Behavioral Health and Recovery Division Brad Finegood, this clinic is a product of the desperate need the county has noticed for years.

“Our job is to make sure that resources exist and people can access treatment where there’s a need for treatment,” said Finegood. “We had begun the conversation a couple of years back about a need for treatment for opiate dependent clients in South King County because we knew there were a lot of them and they were making the trek up north for treatment.”

The CRC Health methadone clinic that is currently located in the Highlands is scheduled to move to Kent later this year. The new location in Kent will accommodate 650 patients, 150 more patients than its current capacity.

Even though South King County will gain an additional methadone clinic this year, the question remains if there are enough resources available to match the rising rates of opiate usage.

A study released by University of Washington last year indicated that heroin deaths of all ages increased by 58 percent in 2014. In 2013, 99 deaths were recorded and 2014 saw 156 deaths. According to King County, 3,615 people were receiving methadone treatment in King County as of October 2015, while 150 people were on wait list each day.

While data for 2015 has not been released yet, Caleb Banta-Green, senior research scientist at UW, says that he hopes the numbers will show a decline.

“I am hopeful that 2015 will actually be level or a bit of a decline given the pretty sizeable increase in methadone capacity and naloxone distribution, combined with the fact that the decrease in availability of pharmaceutical opioids should be decreasing the number of new opioid users,” said Banta-Green. “Given the fact that most recently addicted folks are in their early 20s and opioid addiction is a life long issue, we need to dramatically increase capacity and maintain it for many, many years.

According to Finegood, the clinic is an essential step forward in addressing the issue, however it isn’t enough.

“It takes a long time to build a methadone clinic,” he said. “The problem is growing faster than our ability to build new facilities. So we’re trying to look at every way to be able to provide treatment on demand when people are in need.”

One of the county’s solutions was to put together a task force on heroin and prescription opiate addiction earlier this year. The task force plans to expand treatment capacity, increase access to evidence-based treatment options, expand prevention efforts and increase public awareness and understanding of opiate addiction.

Finegood said that on a city-level, public support for evidence-based treatment is essential.

“Public support is going to be very important,” said Finegood. “One of the biggest battles we are fighting is stigma. People who are opiate dependent are not bad people, they are people who have a sickness and illness. They have a medical condition. Rather than people being afraid, we need the community to rally around the fact that people need treatment. We have a need in our suburban cities and rather than saying we don’t want the services here, we want communities to embrace treatment and treatment that we know it works.”

According to Banta-Green, education is a key element to increase the demand for better services.

“One of the things local communities can do is educate the public about the positive health outcomes of these treatments with methadone and buprenorphine,” said Banta-Green. “This will help build demand for these services which hopefully medical providers, health systems and insurance will take as an indication they should provide adequate capacity and coverage for.”