UAB Launches Opioid Overdose Program

BIRMINGHAM, AL - The UAB Department of Emergency Medicine is launching a new initiative to help patients with opioid use disorders get appropriate therapy and referral for further assistance in an effort to put a dent in the epidemic. The program, called the ED MAT, or Medication Assisted Treatment Protocol, is funded by a $1.5 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Jefferson County Department of Health helped establish the Recovery Resource Center, a referral hub at Cooper Green Mercy Health Services that assesses the severity of an individual’s opioid addiction, determines the intensity of treatment that is required, and coordinates referral to appropriate treatment centers, including the UAB Addiction Recovery Program, the Fellowship House and the Beacon Addiction Treatment Center, among others.

The program has several components: The ED MAT program consists of the use of buprenorphine/naloxone in the ED to treat the symptoms of opioid withdrawal and to decrease cravings, followed by a short-term prescription of buprenorphine/naloxone if appropriate and a take-home naloxone kit.

"Emergency departments are the tip of the spear where societal problems meet healthcare," said Erik Hess, M.D., vice chair for research for the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Emergency Medicine. "The nation’s opioid epidemic plays out every day in our emergency departments."

Patients will also be connected face-to-face with a peer navigator while in the emergency department.

“This is a hard handoff to a peer navigator – an individual in sustained recovery from opioid use disorder who has ‘been there,’ who can help the patient understand the options for continued therapy and how to maneuver through the system to access those options,” Hess said. “The emergency department is our window of opportunity to treat these patients, as many don’t tend to see medical providers outside of emergency situations.”

Another component of the program will be to increase the number of physicians licensed to administer Suboxone. The Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000 provides a waiver for physicians who have undergone the DATA 2000 training to prescribe Suboxone. The program goal is to have 75 percent of UAB emergency physicians receive DATA 2000 waiver training. Currently only about three percent of Alabama physicians have received that training.

Program administrators anticipate enrolling 550 patients with opioid use disorder over the three years of the program.

Alabama leads the nation in opioid prescriptions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Jefferson County alone saw 98 deaths from heroin and 104 from fentanyl use in 2017.