Barriers and Facilitators to Establishing Partnerships for Substance Use Disorder Care Transitions Between Safety-Net Hospitals and Community-Based Organizations

Background: The effectiveness of hospital-based transitional opioid programs (TOPs), which aim to connect patients with substance use disorders (SUD) to ongoing treatment in the community following initiation of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) treatment in the hospital, hinges on successful patient transitions. These transitions are enabled by strong partnerships between hospitals and community-based organizations (CBOs). However, no prior study has specifically examined barriers and facilitators to establishing SUD care transition partnerships between hospitals and CBOs.

Objective: To identify barriers and facilitators to developing partnerships between hospitals and CBOs to facilitate care transitions for patients with SUDs.

Design: Qualitative study using semi structured interviews conducted between November 2022-August 2023.

Participants: Staff and providers from hospitals affiliated with four safety-net health systems (n=21), and leaders and staff from the CBOs with which they had established partnerships (n=5).

Approach: Interview questions focused on barriers and facilitators to implementing TOPs, developing partnerships with CBOs, and successfully transitioning SUD patients from hospital settings to CBOs.

Key results: We identified four key barriers to establishing transition partnerships: policy and philosophical differences between organizations, ineffective communication, limited trust, and a lack of connectivity between data systems. We also identified three facilitators to partnership development: strategies focused on building partnership quality, strategic staffing, and organizing partnership processes.

Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate that while multiple barriers to developing hospital-CBO partnerships exist, stakeholders can adopt implementation strategies that mitigate these challenges such as using mediators, cross-hiring, and focusing on mutually beneficial services, even within resource-limited safety-net settings. Policymakers and health system leaders who wish to optimize TOPs in their facilities should focus on adopting implementation strategies to support transition partnerships such as inadequate data collection and sharing systems.