A man drives while drugged, gets a concussion and goes to the hospital. Doctors patch him up and send him home. The next week the same man gets into a bar brawl, breaks his nose and goes to the hospital. Doctors patch him up and send him home.
It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.
Unfortunately, it’s not.
For a long time this has been the pattern of treating those with drug and alcohol addictions: Patch them up and send them home, or jail them and send them home, but Placer County is looking to coordinate the system so that Health and Human Services, hospitals, law enforcement, child protective services and local nonprofits are all on the same page with how to address the needs of addicts.
That’s where Dr. David Mee-Lee steps in. The noted addiction specialist spoke yesterday to about 150 representatives from organizations that work with addicts. He invited them to change the way they think about recovery.
This coordination and new approach to recovery is possible because the federal government is allowing the states some leeway in choosing where to spend Medicaid or Medi-Cal dollars in the hope of improving outcomes, said Maureen Bauman, director of the county’s adult system of care.
To continue reading this article by Tricia Caspers, go to: http://www.auburnjournal.com/a...change-placer-county
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