Specialized Community Disease Management to Reduce Substance Use and Hospital Readmissions

Hospitalized patients with substance use disorders (SUDs) face significant complications in their medical care. They are more likely to be discharged against medical advice, rehospitalized after discharge, and experience personal chaos and reduced family support. Hospital systems are moving to implement hospital-based and community disease management strategies to help patients transition post-discharge, however, few provide specialized follow-up for patients with SUDs. This proposal will test whether an extended, specialized community disease management program can improve outcomes over an existing nurse navigator disease management strategy for patients with co-morbid medical conditions and SUDs. The investigators will enroll 222 inpatients with co-occurring medical conditions and SUDs and will randomly assign them to either 1) Treatment as Usual - a 90-day, post-discharge program that consists of medical monitoring by workers who have no special training in working with SUD patients, or 2) the Specialized Community Disease Management program - a 90-day program that will employ specialized teams including a trained clinical social worker and a peer-specialist community health worker who will provide evidence-based telephone continuing care, home visits, and increased focus on patients' substance use. All participants will be followed at 3- and 6-months post-discharge. The investigators hypothesize that (1) patients randomized to SCDM will demonstrate larger reductions in substance use measured by urine-confirmed self-reported days using over the 6-month follow-up compared to patients randomized to TAU, (2) patients randomized to SCDM will attend more specialty substance abuse intervention and treatment sessions over the 6 month follow-up than patients randomized to TAU, (3) patients randomized to SCDM will demonstrate reduced HIV transmission risk behaviors and greater rates of HIV testing over the 6 month follow-up than patients randomized to TAU, and (4) patients randomized to SCDM will experience fewer days of rehospitalization and use of acute emergency services than patients randomized to TAU.

Inclusion criteria

• patient is 18 years or older
• alcohol and/or drug screening score that indicates at least mild problem severity

Exclusion criteria

• medical or psychiatric complications
• patient was admitted to hospital directly from a drug and alcohol inpatient rehabilitation facility
• patient reports plans to leave the area within the next 12 months
• patient is unable to provide valid informed consent
• patient is attending dialysis
• patient is not English-speaking