Collaboration Extraordinaire Builds A Bridge to Care

A "Collaboration Extraordinaire" is saving lives and impacting the opioid epidemic in Virginia.  Constructed through a Carilion collaborative is Virginia's first ED Bridge to Treatment model program!  Emergency Medicine, Community Outreach (Peer Recovery Specialists Program), Family and Community Medicine (CommunityCare), Research and Development,  HART Analytics, Marketing and Communications, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine (4th year student and her mentor) AND our Psychiatry Department's Office-based Opioid Treatment (OBOT) Program all joined forces to forge a Bridge to Care whose progress and lessons learned will serve as a model for replication in Virginia.  Patients who present in the ED with acute symptoms related to their opioid use disorder are provided immediate treatment by ED physicians (and their care management teams) creating a medical bridge to ongoing care. On the other side of the bridge, Psychiatry's OBOT has dedicated welcoming intake visits made available to create rapid access to treatment.  Peer recovery specialists help patients navigate the bridge, so often turning hopelessness into hope and instilling the confidence that is needed to make it across the bridge! Other parties are unsung heroes working to collect data, extract lessons learned and to be shared - as captured in our report to the Virginia Dept of Health to be submitted on November 30th.  We invite all in our department and throughout Carilion to join our anti-stigma campaign:  "Recovery Is Possible!"  There will be opportunities to wear, display and help spread our optimistic messages about recovery.  So thankful at this holiday for all of our collaborators!"