Birmingham Recovery Center offers telehealth with virtual drug testing

By JON ANDERSON

The Birmingham Recovery Center, an outpatient alcohol and drug treatment center in Hoover’s International Park, this year started offering telehealth services to help people who live farther away get treatment.

Officials there say they believe their center is the only one in Alabama that offers drug testing virtually as part of the treatment process.

The Birmingham Recovery Center utilizes a smartphone app called clearMINDnow, which uses saliva testing kits to determine if a person is using illicit substances during the treatment process.

Telehealth clients download the clearMINDnow app on their smartphone and are sent drug testing kits that are about the size of a pack of cigarettes, said Ian Henyon, executive director for the Birmingham Recovery Center.

Clients are tested at random times five times per month, Henyon said. They are sent messages on their phone and given six hours to complete the virtual testing process.

For each test, the client must do a live video of themselves opening a sealed testing kit and putting a large cotton swab in their mouth to gather saliva samples and immediately put the swab into the testing kit, Henyon said. A person is reviewing the video live to make sure the test is conducted properly, he said. Results are sent electronically to both the client and staff at the Birmingham Recovery Center within a few hours, he said.

If a person fails the test, they are asked to come in for a urine screen that is sent to a lab for analysis, Henyon said.

As of late April, only one client who completed a virtual saliva test failed the test, and that was because the client was taking a prescription drug that the Birmingham Recovery Center did not have in its records, Henyon said.

Henyon, who has been working in drug treatment for 16 years, said most people do not use illicit substances while in treatment, but there is a small percentage who do.

“Being able to use remote testing, where we can monitor our clients for use and make sure he or she is staying on the recovery track, is vital,” Henyon said. “We have to hold clients accountable, and by coupling the virtual testing process with telehealth, we are able to do just that.”

The telehealth option is available only for people who live more than 30 miles from the treatment center or have a medical condition that impedes travel, Henyon said.

For now, the Birmingham Recovery Center is capping the number of telehealth clients at 10, and as of late April six people are using the service, he said. Clients are asked to commit about three months to the telehealth program.

In addition to the drug testing, the telehealth program utilizes Zoom for three group therapy sessions per week, plus a one-on-one meeting each week between the client and a therapist.

Henyon said he believes in-person therapy and treatment is better than teletherapy, but teletherapy is certainly better than no treatment at all.

And people who live far away from treatment centers are going without treatment too often, he said. It’s not realistic to ask people to drive two hours three times a week for treatment, he said.

Colin Harris, managing director of the Birmingham Recovery Center, said the whole idea with teletherapy is to make treatment more accessible. “By offering telehealth options, we can help more and more people get on the road to recovery — and be successful,” Harris said.

The cost for telehealth is the same as in-person treatment: $3,600 a month, Henyon said. Health insurance plans often cover in-person treatment but sometimes do not cover telehealth, he said.

People who are interested in the telehealth program will undergo a 15-to-20-minute phone assessment and medical screening to determine if the program is a good fit.

Since opening its 7,500-square-foot facility at the end of June 2021, the Birmingham Recovery Center has treated probably close to 1,000 people, Henyon said.

“The demand is much higher than we anticipated,” he said. “We quickly have run out of space at this building.”

To find out more about the Birmingham Recovery Center or its telehealth options, call 205-813-7400 or visit birminghamrecovery center.com.