California Healthline February 27, 2024
Health providers and addiction experts warn the funding structure is unstable for a California initiative that steers patients with substance use disorder into long-term treatment after they are discharged from emergency rooms, which has already led some critical employees to leave their jobs.
Supporters of CA Bridge’s behavioral health navigator program, which launched in 2022, say its reliance on one-time funding makes it hard for hospitals to retain navigators amid a growing drug crisis. In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, 7,385 Californians died from opioid-related overdoses, of which 88% involved fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that can be 50 times as strong as heroin.
“This should be very basic, 101 first aid for opioid use disorder,...
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