City hosp ERs adding addiction treatment
PATIENTS WHO show up at the emergency room at the Bronx’s Lincoln Hospital will be met by counselors who can help them deal with addiction to opioids.
The hospital’s ER will also distribute overdose-reversing naloxone kits. The facility’s primary care offices and pain management and behavioral health programs will also be equipped with the life-saving drug, part of an undertaking that will expand to every public hospital in the city over the next six months.
Lincoln Hospital serves the South Bronx, whose long struggle with opioid abuse the Daily News documented in its series “Opioid Nation” (front covers, inset).
City First Lady Chirlane McCray will announce the latest effort to tackle the city’s opioid epidemic on Friday. “We’re doing this because when patients are in their most vulnerable state, when they’re in pain, suffering and they really don’t want a repeat occurrence of this episode, we know that’s the best time to connect them with someone who cares,” McCray told The News.
More than 20% of emergency visits are by patients with substance-abuse problems — some in the throes of an overdose, others dealing with traumatic injuries from accidents while they were drunk or high. There are also long-term medical complications from using, according to Dr. Sandra Scott, chief of Lincoln’s ER.
Public hospitals already give out naloxone in drug treatment programs, but they’ll now offer it throughout their facilities in hopes of reaching more people. The number of kits given out is expected to jump from just over 100 last year to 800 to 900 this year.
Addiction counselors and peer advocates — who have kicked their own drug habits before getting jobs helping others struggling with addiction — will be on call 24/7 to screen patients who show signs of opioid use and try to get them into some type of treatment.
That program is starting immediately at Lincoln, which has the busiest emergency room in the state, then rolling out at the other 10 sites in the Health and Hospitals system by next March. “Let me tell you, no one wants to be there, no one goes willingly,” McCray said. “They’re there, they’re vulnerable and they’re just more receptive to help.” The city is aiming to reduce overdose deaths by 35% over the next five years. Jessica Aquino, the first addiction counselor in the Lincoln ER, said she understands that quitting opioids is a long slog in which people may end up back in ER in the course of trying again and again to quit. “A lot of people don’t understand, for a person who has been using for a long, long time, it’s easy to get them into a program and have them be sober for a while,” she said. “But it’s also very easy for them to relapse or slip.”