New Autism Center in Macon helping hundreds of families

One in 68 children is born with autism in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Georgia the rate is one in 64.

Health care advocates say Georgia also has a big divide in access to autism care. Atlanta has long had an autism center. Now, a new Middle Georgia center seeks to provide needed care to those outside the big city.

When the Autism Center at Navicent Health in Macon first opened in mid-November, the goal was to help about 100 families in the first year. Over the past six months, 731 patients and their families have flocked to the center for care.

One of those families includes 14-year-old Akeeth Godfrey and his dad, James Burgess of Macon.

Burgess said before they began coming to the center, he had tried to work with Akeeth at home. “We were trying to teach him how to read, understand his colors and help him get dressed, and it’s been a rough road,” Burgess said.

Burgess decided to make that rough road smoother by moving from Macon to Atlanta, home to the Marcus Autism Institute. He says they would have given up much to make the move.

“I would have given up my job, family, and my other kids. But just to get the help Akeeth needs, we were willing to do that,” said Burgess.

The wait time to get into Marcus is more than a year.

Before his plans to move the family were finalized, Burgess heard about the new center at Navicent. He’s been taking Akeeth there for about a month and said he has already seen improvement.

Natalie Rayburn’s 7-year-old son Alex also gets treatment at the Autism Center. “No matter where your child is on the spectrum, the one commonality that any parent that has gotten the diagnosis can relate to is that moment that you realize that something is wrong with your child and the feelings that come with that are complicated, but the best one I can think of is just absolutely devastating,” Rayburn said.

Devastating emotionally and, potentially, financially.

“What’s out there? Is it covered by insurance? That’s kind of what you think about when you start thinking about therapies,” Rayburn said.

Autism care can cost a family about $60,000 a year on average, according to Autism Speaks, a research and advocacy organization. For many families, that’s money they simply don’t have.

The cost and the lack of resources – such as having a treatment facility close by — can cause delays in diagnosis, according to Tripp Ritchie. He’s the director of the Autism Center at Navicent Health. Ritchie said the average age for a child diagnosed in Atlanta is 4 years old. Outside of Atlanta, it’s more than 6 years old.

“Just because you are in a rural area doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have access to those intervention services,” Ritchie said. “So what we’ve done is establish a diagnosis program that we can use to diagnose a child within five weeks.”

Ritchie says the unexpected high demand for services have meant making big changes to staff.

“We’ve doubled our pediatric rehab staff to support that. We have the wait list down from two years to about a month for physical therapy, from 18 months to two months for speech and language therapy and no wait list for occupational therapy at this point.”

Ritchie says the center expects to serve about 2,000 families by the end of the year. It’s also on track to open a full telemedicine clinic that will support up to 300 families in rural areas in the next six months.

This story was originally published May 5, 2016 at 11:36 AM with the headline "New Autism Center in Macon helping hundreds of families."