Acute Care to Community Settings

The University of Minnesota and HealthPartners/Regions Hospital are partnering with emergency care and EMS teams to expand low-barrier access to buprenorphine for opioid use disorder. Using an implementation-science approach, the initiative combines provider training, technical assistance, and continuous quality improvement to strengthen adoption of evidence-based buprenorphine treatment in emergency and prehospital settings.

What We're Implementing

What We're Evaluating

A mixed-methods evaluation combines provider and organizational assessments with EHR and available EMS data to examine whether and how this capacity-building initiative changes clinical practice. The team will evaluate buprenorphine adoption, implementation fidelity, and subsequent acute-care utilization, with the goal of identifying scalable strategies for integrating addiction treatment into routine emergency care.