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GREENSBORO - Numerous errors at Guilford County's Substance Abuse Treatment Center are forcing the rehab center for the indigent to turn away new patients temporarily.

North Carolina health officials fined the facility $1,500 Friday after discovering in a June audit that the center's medicine room was left unlocked and patients were self-medicating. State officials also cited other problems.

"These are not new requirements," said Billie Martin Pierce, director of the Guilford Center, which administers the $2.7 million contract on the nontraditional treatment facility that opened this summer after years of planning.

"This is hugely disappointing," she said. "These deficiencies are what I would call the fundamentals."

Other issues cited by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services' Division of Health Service Regulation include numerous occasions when patients missed medications or doses weren't recorded.

One unidentified staff member, quoted in a survey completed June 19, said that he and others "handed out meds, don't really give them."

The report documented loose practices for dispensing medication. State rules require all medications to be locked up.

Prescription drugs for stomach ulcers, schizophrenia, diabetes, depression and other medical issues are kept at the center.

The audit also found that the facility lacked records on staff training to handle the special needs of substance abuse patients, from mental health complications to simply carrying a patient's emergency contact information when off-site.

Bridgeway Behavioral Health, a Missouri-based substance abuse treatment group, operates the facility. A new director of nursing was hired there after the audit, Pierce said. Bridgeway's chief operating officer is on site to direct the center back to meeting state standards, she added.

Current patients - seven in detox and 36 inpatients - will stay until their treatment is complete. The High Point center on West Wendover Avenue has room for 56 patients. The center was designed to keep clients much longer than the standard 28-day treatment period.

Pierce said it could take at least three weeks before new patients can be accepted again. The rehab facility will draft and submit a corrective plan by Monday.

State officials will then review the plan and revisit the facility.

"I will work with them and request that they return it as quickly as possible," Pierce said, adding that she talked with state workers about the problems Wednesday morning.

The issues come just as the facility was loading up with patients. The center fully opened in late June after several years of planning from Guilford County commissioners and other groups on how to help those with addictions who can't afford insurance or other treatment.

"They screwed up, and there ought to be a penalty to pay, and maybe someone ought to lose their job," Commissioner Paul Gibson said of the center's operators.

The problems could have been worse, he added.

"It's not like we injured someone. It's not like we gave them an overdose of drugs," he said. "We didn't follow the correct procedures, and those procedures are very tough and stringent."

Pierce, director of the Guilford Center since 1993, said she hasn't seen similar problems in her agency before.

And that's despite years of planning behind the center's opening.

In 2004, the News & Record reported on the county's 20-year battle with crack. A consultant's report the following year said that Alcohol and Drug Services, or ADS, had too many unused beds and strayed from its original mission of providing a 12-step treatment program.

In 2007, the county settled on putting $2.7 million in funding toward the substance abuse treatment center. The facility began seeing patients in February.

"Opening this facility is a huge undertaking," Pierce said, "Guilford County has put a lot of time in this and Bridgeway."

Now that new admissions to the clinic is on hold, Pierce said that those needing help with their addiction problems must again turn to the county's hot line.

"We will do as we did prior to Bridgeway opening," Pierce said. "We will work with consumers and families."

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com