Twelve hospitals in Boston and Cambridge have signed a commitment to provide mandatory substance use disorder (SUD) training to all of their hospital-based physicians and residents in key departments, and to also adopt at least three of 10 SUD initiatives designed to support their employees.
Boston Medical Center President and CEO Kate Walsh, Brigham Health President Betsy Nabel, M.D., and RIZE Massachusetts, the non-profit foundation addressing the opioid epidemic convened the hospital group earlier in 2019.
In addition to BMC and Brigham Health, the participating hospitals are Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital; Tufts Medical Center; Massachusetts General Hospital; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Mount Auburn Hospital and New England Baptist Hospital, all part of Beth Israel Lahey Health; Cambridge Health Alliance; Boston Children’s Hospital; Carney Hospital; and St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center.
Specifically, the hospitals commit to mandatory training of all hospital-based ED physicians, hospitalists, obstetricians, psychiatrists, adolescent pediatricians, infectious disease specialists, primary care providers, and internal medicine residents who are not already waiver-trained to prescribe buprenorphine. (The federal government requires “X-waivers”, consisting of training and registration, before a clinician can prescribe buprenorphine for use in maintenance therapy for patients with SUD.) The training the 12 hospitals will offer will be focused on the fundamentals of addiction, effective treatment options, and addressing the stigma associated with SUD. The hospitals are also strongly encouraged to train other providers and commit to increasing the number of caregivers who are waiver-trained.
As for employee support, the hospitals are asked to choose at least three actions from the following list: free naloxone training, surveying employees about the need for SUD support, reviewing existing SUD benefits, putting existing benefits in an SUD guide for all employees, creating an SUD Employee Support Policy, developing training for managers to help them identify and support workers with SUD, setting up a family support group on site, holding a public “Town Hall” event to discuss the issue, sending a letter from the CEO promising a stigma-free workplace, and sharing a pledge to encourage employees to use stigma-free language (such as “person with SUD” as opposed to “addict”).