ER Intervention
The All in for Florida: ER (Emergency Room) Intervention Project was established in response to the opioid crisis. This project, funded through Aetna Foundation’s generosity, aimed to develop new relationships between hospitals and community-based substance use disorder (SUD) treatment providers, generating a person-to-person link, a warm handoff, for transitions between hospital emergency departments and community-based treatment services for overdose victims and patients with an opioid use disorder (OUD).
The three-year project involved collaboration between the
- FADAA
- The Florida Hospital Association (FHA) and
- The Florida College of Emergency Physicians (FCEP) Emergency Medicine Learning & Resource Center (EMLRC).
This project’s goals were to identify best practices for integrating behavioral health care with hospital emergency departments and develop a toolkit that could be used to support expanding warm handoff programs across Florida. This project served as a blueprint for hospitals and community-based behavioral health treatment agencies to form collaborations and seamless transitions to strengthen continuity of care for individuals treated in hospital emergency departments for drug overdose.
Implementing Warm Handoff Programs in Hospital Emergency Departments
Project Report 2018-2020
This report summarizes the efforts of FADAA and those of the project partners to support the development of warm handoff processes in hospital emergency departments across Florida through December 2020. The report also includes a discussion of the challenges, promising practices, and approaches used during the implementation of the initiative.
Hospital Emergency Department Warm Handoff
State of the State – Florida 2020
This State of the State report summarizes the accomplishments to date towards the goal of expanding warm handoff in hospital emergency departments and community-based treatment providers. The report includes a short description of Florida’s warm handoff initiatives and the lessons learned during the project.
Warm Handoff
Implementation Toolkit
The Warm Handoff Implementation Toolkit was created as a resource to hospitals, their emergency departments, and community substance use disorder treatment agencies. It is based on the project’s experiences as the hospitals and community-based treatment providers endeavored to develop a warm handoff. The Toolkit:
- provides guidance on how to develop and implement warm handoff programs,
- identifies the common barriers that arise when trying to implement a warm handoff program and the steps taken to resolve them, and
- offers numerous resources, forms, and checklists that can be used in the development and successful implementation of a warm handoff program.
For additional information contact:
Ive B. Vintimilla, MPA
Director of Contracts and Professional Services
Florida Behavioral Health Association
2868 Mahan Drive, Suite 1
Tallahassee, FL 32308
Phone: 850.878.2196
Email: ive@floridabha.org
