Peer recovery coaches in general medical settings: Changes in utilization, treatment engagement, and opioid use

Recovery coaches, trained peers with a history of substance use disorder (SUD) who are formally embedded in the health care team, may be a cost-effective approach to support outpatient management of SUD treatment. Although recovery coach programs are scaling nationwide, limited data exist to support their impact on costs or clinical outcomes. This study aimed to evaluate the integration of peer recovery coaches in general medical settings. Staff hired and trained nine recovery coaches as a part of a health system-wide effort to redesign SUD care. We examined reductions in acute care utilization and increases in outpatient treatment utilization among patients connected to a recovery coach. Additionally, we examined buprenorphine treatment engagement and opioid abstinence among a subset of patients who initiated buprenorphine prior to or within 30 days of their first recovery coach contact. We hypothesized recovery coach contact would strengthen outpatient SUD treatment and be associated with reductions in SUD severity and preventable acute care utilization. We included patients with an initial recovery coach contact between January 2015 and September 2017 in the main analyses (N = 1171). We assessed utilization outcomes via medical records over one year, comparing the six months before and after first recovery coach contact. We used chart review to extract toxicology results and buprenorphine treatment engagement for the subset of patients initiated on buprenorphine (n = 135). In the six months following recovery coach contact, there was a 44% decrease in patients hospitalized and a 9% decrease in patients with an ED visit. There was a 66% increase in outpatient utilization across primary care, community health center visits, mental health, and laboratory visits. Among patients who initiated buprenorphine, current recovery coach contact was associated with significantly increased odds of buprenorphine treatment engagement (OR = 1.89; 95% CI: 1.49-2.39; p < 0.001) and opioid abstinence (OR = 1.32; 95% CI: 1.02-1.70; p < 0.001). Recovery coaches may be an impactful and potentially cost-effective addition to an SUD care team, but future research is needed that uses a matched comparison condition.