Moon Lawrence E Funeral Home

To that aim, Kettering Health Network is launching a partnership with the Montgomery County drug treatment community to reach out to patients who are in need of long-term drug treatment.Starting this month, rapid response teams from the county’s GROW initiative — Getting Recovery Options Working — will be able to come into KHN hospitals and meet with patients who have agreed to get help for addiction.The GROW teams have been successful in working with law enforcement agencies throughout the county, but have not previously reached out to hospital patients.HOW TO GET HELP: A local opioid addiction resource guideThe teams generally consist of a social worker, a law enforcement officer, an emergency medical technician and a peer supporter — someone who is in recovery from addiction themselves.At the hospitals, the teams will just be a social worker and a peer supporter.The team will be dispatched to the hospital anytime someone admitted for a drug abuse-related overdose or illness agrees to meet with the them, said Tiffany Thompson, a clinical nurse manager at Grandview Medical Center who introduced the GROW initiative to Kettering Health Network.“This is our opportunity to take part in something that is already working in the community,” she said.In more than a third of the 4,000 overdose cases in Montgomery County last year, the patient was treated at a Kettering Health Network facility, Thompson said, totalling more than 1,400 patients.RELATED: Local people share their addiction recovery stories“This number does not include the thousands that come to us for health issues related to their IV drug use,” she said.Good Samaritan Hospital treated about 700 overdoses last year, Thompson said, and KHN is anticipating its hospitals will pick up some of that volume due to Good Sam’s closure later this year.In the past, hospital social workers have provided information to patients who present with substance abuse disorders and urged them to seek out treatment, Thompson said. But they didn’t really have the ability to follow up after the patient was dischar... (WHIO)