Governor Cuomo and the State of New York are making strides to get those suffering from opioid addiction the help they need. As the opioid epidemic has grown, so has the need for additional rehab facilities and detox beds.

Facilities in Monroe County are being forced to turn people away due to a lack of available beds.

Back in February, Governor Cuomo announced a fund of $10 million in capital funding that will go toward developing 84 new community-based medically supervised withdrawal and detox beds to five different organizations across the state. One of those facilities, Villa of Hope, is in Monroe County.

“The need in Monroe County is growing at a rate that not even the state or our community is able to keep up with. If you look at last year with 740 opioid overdoes, four months into this year, we’re already at 356,” said Gerianne Puskas, Villa of Hope Vice President of Development and Marketing.

She added that currently, nearly 30 percent of people who seek help have to leave Monroe County to get it.

Another step the state has taken is allowing Oasis to have emergency rooms and hospitals house inpatient beds.

 “It’s a step in the right direction because sometimes that’s a big connect or disconnect when someone overdoses and ends up in an emergency room. It would be nice if they could just go upstairs three or four floors and have an inpatient bed. We’re all talking the same talk now. I like what the governor is doing as far as putting money and resources into this problem,“ said Monroe County Sheriff Todd Baxter.

UR Medicine provides addiction recovery services to outpatients for Opioid Treatment Programs, but currently none of their facilities have beds dedicated to medical stabilization. What they do have are inpatient detox services for short-term use of up to four days.

Officials at Strong are working to see how the OASIS waiver can help them expand outpatient recovery services, but right now given capacity constraints, they say they don’t envision adding detox beds at Strong or Highland Hospital.

Rochester Regional Health says they’re still working on a plan for their facility.