Overton Brook VAMC

They treat people at inpatient hospital, outpatient, inpatient residential, detox and telemedicine. Outpatient keeps you at home and working, and a residential stay takes you out of the place you were using in.

They detox from alcohol, benzodiazepines, cocaine, methamphetamines and opioids. Which substances a place handles matters more than the word detox, and 3 of the 8 centers near Shreveport offer one at all.

Shreveport has 69 AA groups, which is a different thing from treatment and a useful one next to it.

They treat pregnant and postpartum clients. Ask whether prenatal care is on site or coordinated with somewhere else in Shreveport.

Yes, they treat 65 and over, which is less common than it should be and rarer still outside a city the size of Shreveport.

They prescribe buprenorphine and naltrexone, which is the part of treatment that is prescribed rather than attended. Of the 8 centers near Shreveport, not all of them do.

The useful comparisons are concrete: the level of care, whether there is a prescriber, what the aftercare is, and the cost. A program that cannot tell you its staff to client ratio usually has a reason. Ask what happens if somebody wants to leave partway through, because the answer says a lot about how a place is run.

You are rarely obliged to give a diagnosis to an employer, only a medical reason for leave. Short term disability sometimes applies to a residential stay, depending on the policy. Ask whether the program can start on a date that fits a leave request.