California emergency rooms saw more than 21,000 visits related to opioid overdoses within the past year, according to the California Overdose Surveillance Dashboard.
On the Central Coast, Dignity Health’s Substance Use Navigator (SUN) program is attempting to combat the issue. At Marian Regional Medical Center, Arroyo Grande Community Hospital, and French Hospital Medical Center, 29 providers in the SUN program care for residents struggling with opioid addiction, and the program has helped more than 36,600 residents receive treatment since 2019.
SUN Program Manager for Dignity Health’s Central Coast hospitals Amelia Grover said that care starts when patients are checked into a Dignity Health emergency room asking for help. Its three-fold process comes into play to find that person’s best route for treatment.
The patient is first examined by a “physician clinical champion,” who evaluates each person’s situation and plan of action from a medical perspective. A social worker then steps in to complete a clinical evaluation while a community health worker coordinates with appropriate agencies and develops specific follow-up plans for each patient and their needs.
“They’re sort of a team. They work in tandem together,” Grover said. “The substance use navigation program is really to target individuals who came into the hospital or the emergency department for an issue of substance use disorder. We evaluate any kind of treatment program or treatment that might be beneficial to the patient while they’re in our care, and then we navigate those individuals while they’re in the hospital, and post-acutely as appropriate.”
The SUN program also distributes Narcan kits at no charge for any community members and patients.
“We evaluate when that might be appropriate for patients who are in our care. If they want that, then we will include it as part of their care plan,” Grover said. “Even if people from the community come in and say, ‘Hey, we heard you were a naloxone distribution site,’ and I have a box of naloxone, we will provide them with a box of naloxone. And we don’t necessarily request identifying information. They just need to come in and ask for it, and they can receive one.”
Grover said the program hopes to remove the stigma surrounding opioid addiction.
“We have received feedback from several individuals that they feel safe to come to any one of the Dignity Health hospitals and address these issues,” she said. “That’s a huge part of the barrier to getting treatment and care is, you know, the judgment and the shame that surrounds the disorder, … and so the first step is just making people feel safe.”
The day-to-day of a navigator varies, Grover said, and that’s because not all substance-using patients check into an emergency room for substance use. That’s why the program also created a patient navigator whose sole purpose is to identify patients who may need help and refer them to a social worker.
“[Patients have] complicated health presentations, they’ve got mental health needs, sometimes lots of social determinants of health—kind of like a rubber band ball, right? Like everything kind of layers on top of each other,” Grover said.
And while the program focuses on substance use, it also helps to meet patients where they are with what they are most concerned about.
“If the individual comes in and they have got some social determinants of health, like unstable housing, or they’re recently homeless, their substance use is really what is not going to be their primary focus right then,” she said. “They have all of these other more basic needs that they have to have met, so we may focus on those basic needs and connect them to community-based services that can help them to begin to address those needs. And it may be that, over time, as they get linked and connected, then they’re able to assess their substance disorder.”
Through its work, SUN has seen progress.
“We’ve had a couple of really great successes, where we’ve had people who’ve been in the ICU multiple times due to their substance use, but then finally got connected to treatment. They were ready to get connected to residential treatment, and they were able to then stay healthy and well,” Grover said.
Fast fact
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Luis Obispo and SLO City Church partnered on the Hope for One campaign, an effort to fulfill the Christmas wishes of 24 local families who are part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentorship program. The Hope for One campaign aims to provide both practical assistance and the gift of a memorable Christmas. For more information visit slobigs.org. Δ
Reach Staff Writer Libbey Hanson at lhanson@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Year in Review 2024.
