It had issued citations and required the company to submit plans to correct them. But in 2012, the state created the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, a $125 million agency set up to give substance use the attention lawmakers felt it deserved.Īt the time of Adam’s death in 2014, the department had taken few disciplinary actions against ASI. Oversight used to fall to the Department of Health. Hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians struggle with addiction, but the state does not make easily available some of the most troubling records about facilities meant to treat them.Īddiction treatment facilities in Pennsylvania, like ASI, are licensed and regulated by the state to ensure they follow certain rules and keep vulnerable people struggling with addiction safe. The agency has allowed providers to continue operating despite repeated violations and harm to clients.
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The Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs can’t fine treatment facilities for repeated violations, rarely takes strong disciplinary action against facilities and has revoked just one provider’s license since 2012. Rosalind said it helped a lot of people in a rural area with a high drug-overdose rate. In recent interviews with KHN-Spotlight PA, the Sugarmanns denied responsibility for Adam’s death and maintained that ASI was a good facility. The judge ordered them to pay over $1.6 million in damages, although Ian doubts they ever will.ĪSI eventually shut down, two years after Adam died.
An Allegheny County judge in December 2019 said the business, two of its owners - Rosalind and Sean Sugarmann - and an ASI physician were negligent in caring for Adam. In the wrongful death suit, a lawyer for the Kalinowski family alleged Adam wasn’t evaluated by a physician when he arrived at ASI, didn’t receive the medication or treatment he needed, became increasingly uneasy and anxious throughout the night and killed himself. In a later federal investigation into the facility’s billing and drug distribution practices, a grand jury concluded that a litany of problems occurred at the business many months before and after Adam’s arrival. What his family didn’t know was that Addiction Specialists, often known as ASI, had a history of violating state rules. Ian couldn’t understand what went wrong, and neither could his mom, still in denial on the other end of the phone call. Less than 24 hours after Adam made it to the facility, he was dead, according to expert reports from doctors in the family’s wrongful death lawsuit. (Kristina Serafini / TribLIVE for Spotlight PA) Ian sits for a portrait at his home in Penn Township, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, March 3, 2021. The center, in a Fayette County strip mall, was about an hour’s drive south of Pittsburgh. 3, 2014, he entered a treatment center run by Addiction Specialists Inc., according to a lawsuit later filed by his family against the facility. When he was 32, he typically drank dozens of beers each day. Adam sought treatment, and he relied on methadone for many years, but his problems continued. The problems began, it seemed to Ian, after Adam dropped out of college and used drugs to deal with his depression.
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His mom’s home is still full of swans.Īdam’s struggle with opioid and alcohol addiction was painful for Ian to watch. Adam could turn any piece of paper into an origami swan. Adam served as best man at Ian’s wedding, and Ian admired his brother’s artistic streak.
When Ian moved away for college, he and Adam turned to online poker to stay in touch. Football, hockey and tag filled long days outside their Pittsburgh home. Growing up, it seemed they spent every second together. Why would they do this to me?”Īdam was Ian’s older brother. “Why are they saying this to me? Why are they lying to me?” Ian recalled his mom asking. Now, more than seven years later, he remembers her screams, the shock and the questions she asked over and over again. So when he saw her number show up as an incoming call around lunchtime one Tuesday, he figured it had to be important. When Ian Kalinowski was at work, his mom usually texted him.
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