About
Substance use disorders and substance use result in high rates of healthcare utilization and hospital presentations. There is a care gap and evidence-based care for substance use disorders is often lacking in the hospital setting. Addiction consult programs are novel programs in the hospital setting increasing in adoption to provide specialized addiction intervention and treatment in hospital. Because addiction consult services (ACS) are a relatively recent and novel programming intervention, the breadth of research activity and findings associated with these programs has not been reviewed. A scoping review to describe ACS and the outcomes associated with ACS has many potential policy and programming implications for the acute care setting and for individual practitioners looking to expand addiction services in hospital settings. Scoping review results informed a pilot evaluation of a novel addiction consult program at Toronto Western Hospital, part of University Health Network.
Impact
The project aims to comprehensively summarize outcomes described in relation to addiction specialist consultation in the hospital setting. In addition, multi-method pilot evaluation will describe the pilot addiction medicine consult program and patients who were seen in consultation, determine the outcomes of the service as contextualized by scoping review results and elicit provider perceptions of the pilot to identify practice patterns, challenges and priorities for expansion. This will ideally provide a framework to scale and improve hospital-based addiction care locally and beyond.