Hartford Dispensary: Integrating medical & dental services into an addiction treatment setting.

This presentation serves as an introduction to the community treatment program Harford Dispensary, which is part of the New England Consortium Node. The organization is a non-profit that started in 1871 as an outpatient medical and dental clinic. In the 1960’s, it redesigned its health care services in response to the heroin epidemic in the Hartford area. Now, the agency operates 8 full licensed and accredited clinics in Connecticut that serve over 3800 methadone maintenance treatment program (MMTP) patients on a daily basis. In the early 2000’s, the clinic has been working to develop and implement a primary care and dental services program, in part because so many of their MMTP patients lacked outside access to these services.

Lessons learned by the Dispensary during this process are presented, along with a description of modifications they made to the program along the way.