Hospital-based Addiction Intervention can Improve Substance Use Disorder Treatment Engagement

Addiction intervention in hospital proves successful in treating substance use disorder (SUD), reveals a new study.

Addiction intervention in hospital is more likely to improve substance use treatment engagement, reveals a new study. The findings of the study are published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Patients who meet an //addiction medicine consult team while they're in the hospital are twice as likely to participate in treatment for substance use disorder after they go home, according to new research.

Drug Abuse | Drug Addiction | Substance Abuse - Overview
The use of Drugs for reasons other than its prescribed recommendation, is known as Drug abuse or substance abuse. Drug abuse or substance abuse is initiated by various biological and social factors.

‘Hospital-based addiction intervention proves successful in improving treatment engagement and treating substance use disorder (SUD) more effectively.’
Read More..

The study measured one key outcome for patients who participated in a first-of-its-kind addiction intervention program started by Oregon Health & Science University in 2015.

"This confirms that hospitalization is a reachable moment," said lead author Honora Englander, M.D., an associate professor of medicine in the OHSU School of Medicine. "We were able to sizably increase treatment engagement. That matters because treatment is associated with reduced health care costs, reduced mortality and a whole vast array of really important outcomes."

Project IMPACT, or Improving Addiction Care Team, brings together physicians, social workers, peer-recovery mentors and community addiction providers to address addiction when patients are admitted to the hospital. Englander is the project director.

Patients Recovering From Substance Use Disorder Can Benefit From Brief Exercises
Small, text-based self-administered exercises could increase the level of happiness at that moment, finds a new study. The patients that are being talked about here are recovering from substance use disorder.

The new study compared 208 patients who received addiction medicine consultation at OHSU with a control group of Medicaid patients with similar conditions hospitalized in any Oregon hospital. The study compared the substance use treatment engagement in the month after they were released from the hospital.

A total of 38.9% of IMPACT patients engaged in substance use treatment, compared with 23.3% of similar patients who did not work with IMPACT.

More People in Recovery of Substance Use Disorders Are Quitting Smoking Sooner
Patients who entered recovery from 2006 to 2015 quit smoking sooner than those entering recovery 20 years earlier according to a new study.

Most hospitals do not treat substance use disorder during hospitalization or connect people to treatment after discharge, and hospitalizations related to addiction are extremely costly. Hospitals may lack the staffing, financial resources, or interest in taking on addiction care.

However, people with substance use disorder often end up hospitalized, sometimes as a result of illness arising from their addiction. Examples include endocarditis caused by injection drug use, liver disease from overuse of alcohol, or various kinds of trauma.

Alcohol Use Disorder | Alcoholism
Alcohol use disorder or alcoholism is an inability to control drinking. It can cause short term and long term physical, as well as psychological effects on the patient.

Hospitals are well-equipped to handle the acute medical need, but not the underlying addiction.

"Stigma is a huge driver," Englander said. "People don't think of addiction as something that hospitals should be addressing. Our study pushes back at that."

OHSU's program is one of only a handful in the nation, which remains beset by an opioid epidemic and a rising methamphetamine crisis that claimed more than 70,000 lives in 2017. The new study indicates the program makes a difference in engaging people in treatment.

"Hospital-based addiction medicine care can improve (substance use disorder) treatment engagement, which is associated with reduced substance use, mortality, and other important clinical outcomes," the authors write. "National expansion of such models represents an opportunity to address an enduring gap in the SUD treatment continuum."

Source-Eurekalert