WEEKLY UPDATE: 03/13/25
The Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee (OSAC) voted unanimously this week to approve a $2,160,000 allocation to continue Emergency Department Recovery Coach (EDRC) services at seven Connecticut acute care hospitals, including Bridgeport Hospital (including the Milford campus), Greenwich Hospital, the Hospital of Central Connecticut, Sharon Hospital, UConn John Dempsey Hospital, Waterbury Hospital, and Yale New Haven Hospital (including the Saint Raphael’s campus).
The Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery (CCAR), which administers the program, will receive $540,000 per year over the next four years to make recovery coaches available in each of these emergency departments (EDs) through June 30, 2029. With the approval of this allocation, every ED in Connecticut will continue to be served by the CCAR EDRC program into the future.
For the past several years, Connecticut hospitals have been working with CCAR, through funding provided by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) by virtue of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) grants, to make peer recovery coaches available to patients being treated for substance use disorders in EDs. In March 2017, DMHAS partnered with CCAR to pilot an initiative that pairs on-call recovery coaches with emergency departments in four hospitals in eastern Connecticut. With information from this successful pilot and the support of federal grants, the program expanded to additional hospitals in 2018. In 2022, DMHAS partnered with CCAR to expand the initiative into the last nine acute care hospitals to cover all 31 EDs in Connecticut, as well as five satellite 24-hour emergency departments. This made Connecticut the first state to offer this service to every emergency department.
CCAR coaches assist people who are admitted with opioid overdose and other alcohol or drug-related medical emergencies and connect them to treatment and other recovery support services. They provide Naloxone education at the bedside and educate individuals on various harm reduction resources, including connecting the individual to their chosen resources and services. Coaches are available 16 hours per day, seven days per week. Studies show persons treated for an opioid-use disorder or overdose in one of Connecticut’s EDs who had a CCAR recovery coach had a significantly reduced chance of death or likely death than those without a coach, despite presenting with greater severity of illness (including comorbid serious mental illness, history of suicide attempts, and polysubstance use).
The EDRC program had been funded originally by the McKinsey Settlement Fund, but funding was set to expire on June 30.
The Connecticut Hospital Association (CHA) supports these and other efforts to address the current crisis in demand for behavioral health services.
