PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Marlene Martin
AU  - Hannah R Snyder
AU  - Diana Coffa
AU  - Scott Steiger
AU  - Joseph P Clement
AU  - Sumant R Ranji
AU  - Soraya Azari
AU  - Oanh K Nguyen
AU  - Paula J Lum
TI  - Time to ACT: launching an Addiction Care Team (ACT) in an urban safety-net health system
AID  - 10.1136/bmjoq-2020-001111
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - BMJ Open Quality
PG  - e001111
VI  - 10
IP  - 1
4099  - http://bmjopenquality.bmj.com/content/10/1/e001111.short
4100  - http://bmjopenquality.bmj.com/content/10/1/e001111.full
SO  - BMJ Open Qual2021 Jan 01; 10
AB  - Across the USA, morbidity and mortality from substance use are rising as reflected by increases in acute care hospitalisations for substance use complications and substance-related deaths. Patients with substance use disorders (SUD) have long and costly hospitalisations and higher readmission rates compared to those without SUD. Hospitalisation presents an opportunity to diagnose and treat individuals with SUD and connect them to ongoing care. However, SUD care often remains unaddressed by hospital providers due to lack of a systems approach and addiction medicine knowledge, and is compounded by stigma. We present a blueprint to launching an interprofessional inpatient addiction care team embedded in the hospital medicine division of an urban, safety-net integrated health system. We describe key factors for successful implementation including: (1) demonstrating the scope and impact of SUD in our health system via a needs assessment; (2) aligning improvement areas with health system leadership priorities; (3) involving executive leadership to create goal and initiative alignment; and (4) obtaining seed funding for a pilot programme from our Medicaid health plan partner. We also present challenges and lessons learnt.