Grant-funded Addiction Consult Service to Begin at Baystate Health Community Hospitals

SPRINGFIELD — The Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Addiction Services has awarded a Hospital-based SUD Services grant to Baystate Health’s three community hospitals (Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, Baystate Wing Hospital in Palmer, and Baystate Noble Hospital in Westfield) to start a new addiction consult service.

The five-year, $7 million grant, which aims to expand access to treatment for patients with substance-use disorders in the hospital setting, will allow all three hospitals to provide in-person consults to patients admitted to the emergency room or inpatient units. The program will start at Baystate Franklin Medical Center.

The service is designed to run parallel to the existing addiction consult service at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. Two teams will collaborate to ensure high-quality addiction treatment across all sites.

The grant was secured through the efforts of Dr. Bill Soares and former Baystate Franklin Chief Nursing Officer Deb Provost, who retired earlier this year. Soares and Provost will continue to provide programmatic and administrative support while the service is being developed. The team includes Dr. Adam Chamberlain, medical director, and Nadia Schuessler, research coordinator, who will both be based in Greenfield.

The provider team will assess the needs of patients with substance-use disorders, discuss treatment options directly with patients, and make recommendations to the primary-care team. They will also help patients connect with outpatient treatment and harm-reduction services.

“We are thrilled to offer this much-needed resource to patients and provide support to our emergency-medicine and hospitalist colleagues,” Chamberlain said. “We have started seeing patients at Baystate Franklin this month. We will expand the program to Baystate Noble and Baystate Wing starting in early 2025.”

The team is in the process of hiring two advanced-practice providers who will service patients at Baystate Noble and Baystate Wing. In addition, the team will get assistance from recovery coaches at each site, as well as a social worker who will help patients connect with substance-use-disorder clinics in the community.