Hospital

The Federal Office of Rural Health Policy is funding a new resource to assist states in conjunction with the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) as they establish new licensure standards for Rural Emergency Hospitals (REH). 

Presenters reviewed resources available to rural grantees through their respective agencies.

Goals: Increase knowledge of harm reduction principles, strategies, and resources, increase knowledge of managed use, abstinence, and safer use to meet people who use drugs where they are at, provide a safe environment (plenaries and breakouts) to discuss licit and illicit drug use as a multi-faceted phenomenon requiring successful interventions and policies and increase knowledge of stigma as it relates to harm reduction principles and practices.

This webinar provided a review of basic principles of integrated behavioral health and an update on recent outcomes and implementation research.

People who use drugs (PWUD) in the U.S. experience disproportionate adverse health outcomes and mortality as compared with the population as a whole (Lake & Kennedy, 2016; Reisinger, Pratt, Shoenborn, & Druss, 2017). Similar health outcomes have been reported elsewhere, for example in the UK (Neale, 2004), and across 8 other European countries (Bargagli et al., 2006). In the U.S. health outcomes among PWUD are intensified by the overdose pandemic, epidemic rates of HIV, hepatitis A and C, skin and soft tissue infections (CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020; Hagen, Thiede, & Des Jarlais, 2005; Scholl, Seth, Kariisa, Wilson, & Baldwin, 2019), and by structural barriers thwarting health access and utilization.

Whereas outpatient treatment with medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) is evidence based, there is a large network of inpatient facilities in the US that are reimbursed by commercial insurers and do not typically offer MOUD. This study is a comparison of rates of overdose and hospitalization after initiation of medication for Opioid Use Disorder in the inpatient vs outpatient setting.

This article offers data regarding offering buprenorphine treatment at a public hospital primary care setting using a home, unobserved induction protocol.

The Providers Clinical Support System (PCSS) Mentoring Program support is recommended for clinicians who are contemplating or have recently begun prescribing MOUD and would like additional support. PCSS offers three tiers of service at no cost to the recipient: (1) a discussion forum, (2) the ability to submit a clinical question through the PCSS website, and (3) one-on-one mentoring.

This guide was created for harm reduction medical staff and volunteers as a resource about the types of wounds common with injection drug use and also to increase knowledge about treatment modalities for this population. Skin and soft-tissue infections are the most common cause of hospitalization among people who inject drugs.

The IHS forensic healthcare program was established in 2011 to address sexual violence, and has expanded to include intimate partner violence, child sexual abuse, and elder maltreatment. The program trains providers in forensic medical examinations, evidence collection techniques, and in coordinated community response to address violence.