Baystate Franklin launches in-patient addiction consult service with $7M grant

ADAM CHAMBERLAIN
Published: 12-26-2024 3:34 PM |
GREENFIELD — With the support of a five-year, $7 million grant, three of Baystate Health’s hospitals are launching a substance use disorder treatment program, which will be based at Baystate Franklin Medical Center.
The $7 million grant, awarded by the Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Addiction Services, will allow Baystate Health to launch an in-patient addiction consult service to expand the region’s resources. While based in Greenfield, the program will also expand to Baystate Noble Hospital in Westfield and Baystate Wing Hospital in Palmer.
The grant was secured by Dr. Bill Soares and former Baystate Franklin Chief Nursing Officer Deb Provost, who both will provide programmatic and administrative support in the service’s early stage. Dr. Adam Chamberlain, who serves as the medical director of the community addiction consult service, said this sort of in-patient service designed solely to treat substance-use disorders is a novel prospect for community hospitals like Baystate Franklin.
“That’s not the norm. They’re becoming more common in big medical centers, but in terms of community hospitals, this is something that I’m not aware of that there’s many other examples,” Chamberlain said in a Zoom interview. “This is something special.”
Chamberlain said the program will operate much like how other specialized care operates. The addiction consult team will assess patient needs, discuss treatment options with patients and make recommendations to the primary care team, as well as help patients connect with outpatient treatment and harm-reduction services.
“For patients that are coming either into the emergency department or the general medical floors, you get a consult the same way that if you come into the hospital with a heart problem and you get a cardiology consult,” he explained. “It’s the same basic idea, and we help support the providers and staff for those specific questions about treating substance-use disorders.”
The implementation of the program, Chamberlain said, does two things: it provides better care for those in the community struggling with substance use disorders and increases Baystate’s capacity for care all around.
The nascent consult service in Greenfield also runs parallel to the existing addiction consult service at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, which will allow for collaboration between the two teams.
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“The medical management of substance use disorder, at least for opioid use disorders, is something that is fast-moving. There’s lot of changes because there’s lots of changes to the drug supply, so we need to be very up to date,” Chamberlain said, emphasizing that more resources will allow the hospital to further address the “social piece” of medical care.
“A community hospital, overall, just does not have huge amounts of resources. Treating people with substance use disorders requires a lot of time and resources,” he added. “Having that time to actively listen and to put more focus [on people] is something we will be able to provide.”
The program launched at Baystate Franklin in mid-November and Baystate Health is in the process of hiring two advanced nurse practitioners to expand the addiction consult service to Westfield and Palmer.
Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.