UF&Shands Florida Recovery Center opens location at Orlando Health’s South Seminole Hospital

The Florida Recovery Center is a nationally recognized addiction treatment program.

The UF&Shands Florida Recovery Center, a nationally recognized academic and clinical research-driven addiction treatment program, will bring new treatment options to patients in Central Florida with a new location at the Orlando Health Behavioral Specialists practice at South Seminole Hospital. The FRC, based at the University of Florida, is rated by the Annenberg Foundation as one of the nation’s top three addiction programs and training sites.

Beginning in April, the new center, named UF&Shands Florida Recovery Center at Orlando Health, will serve as a destination for the evaluation and treatment of people facing alcohol and drug addiction.

The UF&Shands Florida Recovery Center at Orlando Health bridges the gap in outpatient services for people suffering with an addiction who are receiving fragmented inpatient and outpatient services, or those who are leaving the Central Florida area to seek addiction treatment elsewhere.

“Addiction is both a national and local public health concern,” said Gilbert T. Tamakloe, medical director, Behavioral Health Services, Orlando Health. “Additional outpatient services for addiction are a great need in our community. Although there are programs available, there are few programs that compare to the comprehensive approach the FRC provides to its patients. We are pleased that the Florida Recovery Center will join our health care organization in meeting our community’s growing needs.”

Orlando Health and UF&Shands look forward to offering the community a partnership in alcohol and drug addiction evaluations, inpatient and outpatient services and addiction intervention and treatment, officials said.

“It is an ideal scenario to bring a new, expert Florida Recovery Center team with special training and skills to Orlando Health, which is a state leader in so many other areas of medicine and surgery,” said Mark S. Gold, M.D., a professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry at UF. “We know from the calls for help that we receive that Orlando is an underserved area. Dr. Scott Teitelbaum, our division chief of addiction medicine, is the president of the Florida Society of Addiction Medicine and we know from his work that board-certified, fellowship-trained addiction physicians are very hard to find in the Orlando area.”

Addiction medicine specialist Timothy Huckaby, M.D., has been appointed as the medical director of the UF&Shands Florida Recovery Center at Orlando Health. He will evaluate patients, consult with physicians and health care professionals at South Seminole Hospital and others in the Central Florida community, and oversee an intensive outpatient program (IOP), a three- to six-week program that integrates patients back into their communities, families and work lives.

The IOP also consists of group meetings four nights a week for 12 to 16 weeks. The primary goal of the IOP is to help assist patients in their recovery from addiction and help integrate them back into living healthy lives.

Dr. Huckaby and his clinical team will examine some of the behaviors that have caused the patient to have difficulty in the past, and change those behaviors to establish and maintain a sober support system. The FRC team will provide family, couples and group counseling as well. The goal of the program is to help those in recovery effectively manage the social, spiritual, physical and emotional aspects of life to maintain a lifestyle of recovery.

The FRC team will work the Orlando Health Behavioral Healthcare at South Seminole Hospital (inpatient) and the Orlando Health Behavioral Specialists (outpatient) teams of certified and experienced psychiatrists, nurses, social workers and other clinicians to provide patient care.

Dr. Huckaby is a board-certified anesthesiologist who also has been trained in an addiction medicine fellowship at UF and an obstetric anesthesiology fellowship at Harvard. His experience in pain, pain management, women’s health and iatrogenic addictions will add to FRC at Orlando Health’s suite of treatment options. In addition to addiction services, Dr. Huckaby also will offer pain medicine services through the UF&Shands Florida Recovery Center.

Because the Florida Recovery Center is affiliated with the University of Florida and UF’s McKnight Brain Institute, patients have the benefit of a bench-to-bedside approach to addiction science, receiving treatment based on the latest addiction medicine research.

The UF&Shands Florida Recovery Center at Orlando Health is part of an ongoing collaboration of health initiatives between Orlando Health and UF&Shands, making care more accessible to millions of patients over a 20-county region. The alliance was formed in 2010 as a result of a longstanding history of close working relationships.

In addition to the recent addiction medicine initiative, the organizations have formed or will begin several joint clinical programs in areas including pediatrics, neuroscience, oncology, women’s health, transplantation and cardiovascular medicine.

For additional information about the Florida Recovery Center at Orlando Health, contact 855.265.4FRC(4372), or visit floridarecoverycenter.ufhealth.org.