Study: Substance Use Navigator Support Doubles Likelihood of Addiction Treatment and Lowers Rate of Unplanned Readmissions

Oakland, CA — A new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, an international peer-reviewed publication by Springer Nature, has found that support from substance use navigators can significantly improve health outcomes for patients experiencing substance use disorders through early treatment interventions and reduced unplanned hospital readmissions.

The research, conducted by the Public Health Institute’s (PHI) Bridge Center in partnership with Marshall Medical Center, evaluated hospitalized patients with alcohol and/or opioid use disorders at Marshall’s main hospital campus in Placerville, CA. Findings show that patients who received a consultation from a substance use navigator were twice as likely to begin FDA-approved medications used for addiction treatment and experienced a 64 percent lower rate of 30-day unplanned readmissions compared to those who did not receive navigator support. Importantly, this study highlights that such significant results are possible in small, rural hospitals.

The substance use navigator program at Marshall launched in 2019 through the Bridge Center’s CA Bridge initiative. The program integrates trained navigators within the emergency department and hospital facilities to identify patients with substance use disorder and initiate medications for addiction treatment (MAT). Patients are then provided with resources that connect them to low-barrier community-based recovery services for further support.

CA Bridge and the Bridge Center help break down barriers to treatment by ensuring an open door to treatment in a place everyone can access — the emergency room. In the seven years since CA Bridge launched its program supporting ED-based substance-use treatment, affiliated hospitals have seen more than 333,000 patients. More than 75% of California’s emergency rooms are currently implementing the Bridge model, and Bridge is now expanding nationally.

The article, Impact of Substance Use Navigators on Initiation of Treatment for Substance Use Disorders and 30-Day Unplanned Readmission, appears in the October 2025 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

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About the Bridge Center

Emergency care is the only healthcare that is guaranteed to anyone in the U.S., regardless of ability to pay. Bridge aims to build on this guarantee by bridging emergency care and community health to create an integrated system that improves health and equity. Using a social emergency medicine approach, Bridge supports emergency providers and their community partners with tools, training, and technical assistance to help them better serve people who have been traditionally excluded from the healthcare system.

The Bridge Center is a program of the Public Health Institute, an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting health, well-being and quality of life for people throughout California, across the nation and around the world. Please visit phi.org.