MERCHANTVILLE, N.J.-An enterprising addictionologist may have to leave the state to keep his outpatient detox practice alive.
The New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners, awakened to “four-hour detox” via anesthesia in a physician’s office by Dr. Lance Gooberman’s newspaper ads and billboards, has proposed restricting the procedure to university medical centers.
Dr. Gooberman, who’s treated 1,200 patients in the past three years, charges $2,900 for heroin detox and $3,600 for methadone-a global fee that includes medical follow-up. Patients are sent home with a naltrexone implant, which he’s trying to patent, and a referral to a 12-step program. He says many patients are repeats.
Dr. Gooberman says he might relocate to Pennsylvania. His practice is also threatened by other new state office-anesthesia requirements that the internist says would force him to hire an anesthesiologist and raise prices. Yet the state says it’ll allow exceptions on a case-by-case basis to non-anesthesiologists doing rapid detox.
Dr. Gooberman says he sent a half-dozen early patients to the hospital, but he adds that none had permanent injuries and that addicts face greater risks if they don’t kick drugs. Two other patients died of cocaine overdoses, he says, the night after the procedure.
CITA-Americas has sued Dr. Gooberman, claiming misappropriation of its protocol. But he says his method is different, citing the implant, and the suit, he adds, is near settlement.
Anesthesiologist David Simon of Tolland, Conn., says he got a threatening letter from CITA-Americas, but that hasn’t deterred him from doing 130 rapid detox procedures, at $3,000 a pop, over the past 14 months. Patients stay overnight at his clinic.
MERCHANTVILLE, N.J.-An enterprising addictionologist may have to leave the state to keep his outpatient detox practice alive.
