Follow-up to ‘warm handoffs’ helping overdose patients stay in recovery

Newsrooms across the commonwealth have spent years documenting the opioid crisis in their own communities. But now, in the special project State of Emergency: Searching for Solutions to Pennsylvania’s Opioids Crisis, we are marshalling resources to spotlight what Pennsylvanians are doing to try to reverse the soaring number of overdose deaths.

WITF is releasing more than 60 stories, videos and photos throughout July. This week, you will find stories about treatment facilities and recovery.

Pennsylvania health officials have been encouraging emergency rooms to adopt “warm handoffs” — in which an overdose victim is connected directly to treatment from the ER, instead of sending them out the door. The idea is to get more people into recovery at a crucial moment in their addiction.

Helping patients stay in recovery is another matter — one that Chester County is trying to address with a pilot program launched in May at two local hospitals.

In some respects, Chester’s idea is similar to other warm handoff programs. When someone arrives at the ER after an overdose, hospital staff can call a team of certified recovery specialists — all of whom have been through addiction and recovery themselves — to help patients navigate treatment options.

But the county’s program requires those specialists to keep following up with patients and their families for at least three months or longer.

“We didn’t want to just end at the emergency room,” said Vince Brown, the director of the county’s drug and alcohol programs. “It’s one thing to have a point in contact in the ER and connect them to treatment, but there really does need to be that continuation.”

Commissioner Michelle Kichline, who’s at the forefront of most of the county’s efforts on the opioid crisis, said Chester’s version of a warm handoff is designed to help recovery stick. Key to that goal is helping patients’ families to support them when they return home.

“There are a lot of services and resources in the community for both the person that has the addiction as well as the family. A lot of family members aren’t aware of what’s out there until a crisis [like an overdose] hits,” Brown said. “We thought it was important to have someone give families direction and education.”

The program is funded in part from state grants, and in part from an annual 5K run/walk that more than 1,000 people participated in last year.

Chester County has the lowest fatal overdose rate in southeastern Pennsylvania. Its small size and distance from Philadelphia, the epicenter of the region’s opioid epidemic, may have insulated it somewhat. Officials also credit a longstanding drug court and the early establishment of a drug task force about six years ago. But the crisis remains a major concern even for the state’s “healthiest and wealthiest” county.

“Some programs we created on our own, but we were never too proud to steal good approaches that we saw working around the nation,” like the concept of warm handoffs, said district attorney Tom Hogan.

It’s too soon to tell whether the new program is making the kind of impact that county officials have hoped for, Brown said. But he’s been encouraged by early reports about how quickly the on-call specialists are able to reach patients, and ready to tweak the program if necessary — and, when possible, to expand it to the county’s other three hospitals.