Partnership to Address Opioid Epidemic and Save Lives in Western New York Through Medication Assisted Treatment - Title: Partnership to Address Opioid Epidemic and Save Lives in Western New York Through Medication Assisted Treatment
Spectrum Health and Human Services, a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic, and Evergreen Health Services, a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike (Partners), will collaborate to: expand access to medication assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorder (OUD) through outreach and engagement of high risk populations; increase the number of data-waived providers; and expand telehealth. Our population of focus is adolescents and adults with OUD, substance use disorder, co-occurring mental and substance use disorders, and those living with or at risk of HIV and hepatitis C due to injection drug use.
Within the Partner’s large, mostly rural, Western New York 10-county catchment area, we will broaden our jail outreach to additional counties and streamline care coordination at the time of reentry, as well as grow our social media marketing to both potential referring providers and individuals and families seeking OUD treatment. We will increase the number of providers with data waivers each year of funding and expand MAT service to our two syringe exchange programs (SEPs), which are the only SEPs in Western New York, via telehealth. Our robust evidence-based practices complement medication treatment.
The project’s goals are to increase the number of clients receiving MAT, increase linkage to and maintenance of complementary behavioral health services, and ultimately prevent overdoses. The Partners will measure progress towards those goals through monitoring the number of newly data-waivered providers, the volume of patients in both our low-threshold and main MAT program, the percentage of patients maintained on MAT and connected to ancillary services, and the percentage of clients with co-occurring disorders whom we engage through a peer. We will track the number of overdose deaths in our aggregate client population. Each year we will serve an additional 200 patients, for a total of 1,000 additional patients served by the end of the grant.
