Dr. Michael Brant-Zawadzki and Marshall Moncrief
Moncrief is Hoag’s director of neurobehavioral health and oversees operations of Hoag Addiction Treatment Centers and SolMar Recovery; Brant-Zawadzki is senior physician executive of Hoag Hospital and executive medical director of Pickup Family Neurosciences Institute.
Moncrief and Brant-Zawadzki led the charge for Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian’s newest addition, SolMar Recovery, a 21-bed residential substance abuse treatment center. The first in California to be located on an acute-care hospital campus, SolMar offers stays of 30, 60 and 90 days, and accepts insurance at a time when the Affordable Care Act requires coverage of drug and alcohol abuse treatment.
“The realization that addiction is rooted in the brain—in brain chemistry and brain connectivity—makes the point that simply a behavioral model, or peer-to-peer treatment model, which is how the rehab industry and rehab treatment philosophy grew up, is insufficient by itself,” Brant-Zawadzki says. “It needs to be coupled with modern neuroscientific knowledge, and its input to management of this brain disorder.”
From the most advanced brain imaging techniques to specialized experts in neurology, psychiatry and psychology, the 10,000-square-foot facility has the full backing of the hospital’s resources, including emergency care and inpatient and outpatient services and facilities. According to Moncrief, “There’s a message inherent in Hoag integrating addiction treatment into the Neurosciences Institute: that this is a brain disease that is worthy of, deserving of, needing the same compassion and clinical caliber that has established Hoag as a national health care leader.
“We didn’t talk about breast cancer … [and] AIDS for a long time because of stigma and sensitivity,” Moncrief says. “[But] when the health care community wrapped its arms around those two things, it helped de-stigmatize them and we made advances. That’s what we’re modeling here. … I think mental health and substance abuse [are] next in the public’s evolutionary embrace of complex health disorders.”
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