After becoming the first graduate of KU School of Medicine-Wichita’s addiction medicine fellowship, Luke Rosebraugh, M.D., is embarking on another first: He is the Hutchinson area’s first full-time addiction medicine specialist.

“There are a lot of different facilities and organizations up here involved with care for people who are in addiction or recovery, but as far as I can tell, there’s not a dedicated addiction medicine physician,” Rosebraugh said.

Rosebraugh, who completed the one-year fellowship in June, hopes to help expand addiction care across the region served by Hutchinson’s medical community.

“Hutchinson, I think, has a lot of unique features that make it a good place to start,” he said. “There are already people who are interested in doing similar things, like expanding addiction treatment to surrounding counties.”

Rosebraugh’s job splits his time between Prairie Star Health, which is a federally qualified health center, and Hutchinson Regional Healthcare System, which operates a 199-bed hospital that is Reno County’s largest employer and serves neighboring counties in south-central Kansas.

Rosebraugh said his decision to practice in Hutchinson evolved from conversations with the Kansas Behavioral Health Center for Excellence, a state-funded coalition of behavior health providers that also funds the KU Wichita fellowship. They asked, “would you continue to work with KU from a rural standpoint?”

“And I initially balked at that,” Rosebraugh said. But after meeting with several people, he realized “there’s a lot of passion with regard to substance abuse treatment in a rural setting. I thought it matched with the kind of people I want to work with. And there’s a lot of potential to build something really special.”

Since arriving, he’s met with the Reno Recovery Collaborative, a group that includes treatment providers, social service and law enforcement agencies. Among the indicators the group tracks are overdoses and substance use fatalities.

“With addiction being intertwined with all these different sociological and biological issues, it helps to be involved with a lot of these organizations,” Rosebraugh said. He gave a presentation about managing opioid prescriptions to a provider group earlier this month.

His job calls for him to be available for inpatient and emergency room consults at Hutchinson Regional Medical Center — “kind of taking the heat off providers” — and to provide outpatient care at Prairie Star Health. 

He has several longer-term goals: beefing up the addiction treatment offered by mobile rural satellite clinics based in Hutchinson; instituting telemedicine options to serve the same population; and developing Hutchinson into a treatment hub where detoxication and residential treatment services are available, similar to options in Wichita, Salina and Dodge City.

“If we can build up their satellite clinics, if we can do telemedicine, I think that would be very helpful,” he said.

As for residential treatment services, he’s noted that a former nursing home adjacent to the hospital could be one option. “A lot of times, (patients) are going past Hutchinson and going to Wichita. Wichita is kind of the recovery hub. Salina has a recovery community. There’s not really a recover hub that’s as robust as Wichita once you get west of Wichita.”

Asked how a rural addiction medicine practice might differ from an urban one, Rosebraugh said, “I don’t know that there’s a huge difference in how people suffer from addiction. I think everybody’s got a different story with how their process started, even though the themes are similar. In rural areas, there’s not as much support as you might find in cities, like sober living housing or doctors familiar with (certain) medications. There’s going to be a lot of judgment and shame and prejudice involved with the patient population (in rural settings).”

Rosebraugh didn’t set out to become a rural addiction medicine specialist, but there are clues in his background pointing in that direction. He is the son of two physicians who are originally from rural Kansas. He grew up in suburban Washington, D.C., graduated from KU School of Medicine’s Kansas City campus and then did his family medicine residency at the KU Smoky Hill Family Medicine Program in Salina. But he admits he “didn’t find a lot of joy in family medicine,” and when he learned of the new addiction medicine fellowship, he jumped at the opportunity. Personal reasons played a big part in his decision.

“I’m in long-term recovery myself, and a lot of people that seem to have a lot of success in their recovery kind of build their lives around their recovery,” he said, adding: “There’s a big concept in recovery about how you strengthen your own recovery by helping other people. I have found that to be a hundred-percent true.”

Rosebraugh did find joy in the fellowship, where he worked with patients at the Veterans Administration, Comcare and other sites.

“My favorite thing in that program was doing the inpatient side of things — start in the morning with the patients and the rest of the care team doing a morning huddle.”

Rosebraugh said his background in itself doesn’t make him a better addiction medicine specialist, but he doesn’t hide it and “patients do respond to it.”

“There are a lot of misconceptions about addiction and recovery and it’s nice to be able to share my own experiences.”

And since he still had a desire to serve rural Kansans, he decided to put his new skill set to work here.

Rosebraugh added that he believes the fellowship program, headed by director Ashley Haynes, M.D., and coordinator Shelly Small, prepared him well for his new role.

“For me, the fellowship was a life-changing miracle that came exactly when it needed to. I’m deeply grateful to Dr. Haynes and Shelly for allowing me to be their first fellow.”