GREENFIELD — Looking to potentially triple its capacity, the methadone clinic on Shelburne Road is looking for a larger space.

Currently the Health Care Resource Centers clinic is typically full and cannot admit many, if any, new patients, its regional director of operations, Jason Goguen, said. That’s not what health providers, who say they have many clients who could use its services, wanted to hear.

Knowing the demand in Franklin County, Goguen told members of the Opioid Task Force at a meeting last week he wants to expand their current facility, which can service about 170 people. He said he’s looking for a place in Greenfield that could serve about 500 patients, with at least 5,000 square feet.

When expanding the size of a methadone clinic, it can allow for more space for one-on-one counseling, nursing staff and dosing windows.

“I’m very excited for the opportunities in Greenfield,” Goguen said, who oversees clinics in Westfield, Chicopee and Northampton as well.

He was close to buying a space elsewhere in Greenfield, but ultimately decided it was not big enough to meet the demand, he said. He declined to say where that property was located.

While members of the task force applauded the idea of expanding services in a rural county that needs more methadone services, they did ask Goguen to understand the demand in the area better. They explained a key piece to the demand in Greenfield is the lack of a clinic in the Orange-Athol area.

Dr. Ruth Potee, local opioid expert and a co-chair of the task force’s health care solutions committee, asked for “laser focus” on this instrumental issue of an Orange-Athol clinic as well as increasing the size of a Greenfield clinic.

Rebecca Bialecki, vice president of Community Health and Athol Hospital, reiterated the need for a clinic to come to her area. Potee pointed to a space near the hospital that is already zoned for medical use, which could help expedite the process to open a facility there.

Goguen said, however, his focus currently is on Greenfield and he’ll keep an eye on expanding to Orange.

Members of the task force asked him when exactly he hopes to open a bigger facility in Greenfield, to which he responded, “I’d love to have this done by sometime soon, but I’m going to need help.”

Part of what has prompted this conversation by Goguen is a restructuring of the organization that owns the methadone clinic in Greenfield. Previously, Goguen was the regional director for BayMark Health Services, under the national opioid addiction treatment and rehabilitation BAART programs brand. But at the beginning of the year, Goguen began working for Health Care Resource Centers, the new owner of the clinic.

Goguen said he had re-evaluated the way the western Massachusetts clinics were running. This led to the idea to expand the Northampton’s clinic services to the entirety of the building it is in. This also led to the hiring of individual clinic directors, instead of one person overseeing them all. The new director of the Greenfield program, Angela Burkhart, was present for the meeting, though her first formal day on the job is expected to be in mid-April.

You can reach
Joshua Solomon at:

jsolomon@recorder.com or

413-772-0261, ext. 264