“The Emergency Room” in the Drug Court System: Evaluating the Opioid Intervention Court

ABSTRACT

The Opioid Intervention Court (OIC) began in Buffalo, NY, in May 2017 as an intensive intervention for people at risk of overdose. We evaluated the OIC focusing on four major aims: (1) To describe OIC participant demographic characteristics, completion, and court engagement, from court administrative data; (2) To examine OIC completion by demographics and court engagement characteristics; (3) To describe participants’ OIC experiences from survey data; (4) To explore court team members’ perceptions and experiences based on interviews. Results suggest that participants who initiated MAT within the first week were more likely to complete OIC. Participants and personnel responded favorably to the OIC program.

KEYWORDS:

• Drug treatment court
• medication-assisted treatment
• opioid-involved
• addiction
• buprenorphine

Acknowledgments

This project was supported by the Buffalo Adult Drug Court Discretionary Grant Program (Award # 2016-DC-BX-0070) awarded to New York State Eighth Judicial District by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

This paper was also partially supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under award number T32HP30035 (PI: L. Kahn) in support of Rachel Hoopsick, PhD.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bureau of Justice Assistance [grant number 2016-DC-BX-0070]; Health Resources and Services Administration [grant number T32HP30035].