Addiction Medicine Fellowship - Fellows trained under Rushford Center’s Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) certified Addiction Medicine Fellowship program will work throughout the Hartford HealthCare (HHC) system across multiple sites in areas of need. The development of fellowship training sites and increasing faculty will help the healthcare system in Connecticut better deal with the burden of addiction. Additional funding will allow Rushford to increase staff faculty and increase the number of fellows we are able to accept into the program. Rushford plans to supervise/train up to three fellows per year by the end of the five-year grant period and therefore will help train the future leaders in the field of addiction medicine. Rushford will utilize the Addiction Medicine Fellowship program to develop an expanded, robust team of physician faculty to train an increased number of fellows in the program. The aim is to graduate addiction medicine certified physicians to address the burden of overdose death and substance use disorder morbidity in the State of Connecticut and across the U.S. and to help patients avoid costly and time consuming services in the hospital emergency departments by working with them to manage their substance use disorder in various outpatient settings. Rushford’s clinical priority is expansion of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship to positively impact the mortality and morbidity of substance use disorders in our healthcare system and across the State of Connecticut. Rushford’s fellows will have the opportunity to work in several different locations within the HHC system of care. HHC is Connecticut’s only truly integrated healthcare system. With over 43,000 employees, the system offers the full continuum of care with seven acute care hospitals, Behavioral Health Network (includes Rushford), and rehabilitation services, a large multispecialty and primary care physician group and clinical integration organization, skilled-nursing and home health services. An prime example of the addiction medicine fellows rotations includes time at sites that provides medical and social services to medically complex patients living with chronic illnesses and issues such as infectious disease (HIV, HCV), diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic pain, psychological challenges, and substance use disorders; addiction medicine fellows are able to see primary care paired with specialty care, and learn to execute a seamless process to coordinate care for complex patients in a high need area.
