Timothy Brennan, MD, Director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s and Mount Sinai West, and Yasmin Hurd, PhD, Director of the Addiction Institute of Mount Sinai.
In August, Mount Sinai St. Luke’s and Mount Sinai West launched the Addiction Consultation and Evaluation Service (ACES) to address the growing need for addiction-specific support for physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants caring for general medical and surgical inpatients.
Due to the opioid crisis, in recent years general medicine and surgery clinicians have been reporting an uptick in patients with addiction-related conditions, such as abscesses due to intravenous drug use, as well as patients requesting treatment for addiction. ACES was established to serve as a resource in these situations by providing prompt, evidence-based recommendations for the full range of addiction pathology, including complex withdrawal syndromes and other manifestations of substance use disorders. Since the soft launch on August 1, ACES has handled 18 consults.
ACES is currently led by Timothy Brennan, MD, Director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s and Mount Sinai West. The team is made up of addiction medicine fellows and addiction psychiatry fellows, and six attending physicians in two-month rotations: Prameet Singh, MD, the Site Chair for Psychiatry at MSSL and MSW; Annie Levesque, MD, Medical Director of the Opioid Treatment Program at MSW and Associate Director of the Fellowship in Addiction Medicine Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Manassa Hany, MD; Anil Thomas, MD, Director of the Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship Program; and David Lehman, MD.
Addiction medicine is the newest member of the American Board of Medical Specialties, and hospitals and health systems are now focused on integrating addiction medicine providers into their various clinical service lines. Less than one percent of hospitals and health systems nationwide have a service like ACES, but the field is evolving quickly and organizations are adapting accordingly with their own versions. “Historically, addiction care was provided outside of the hospital by non-credentialed providers,” said Dr. Brennan. “Our goal with ACES is two-fold: to support our medical and surgical colleagues by optimizing addiction care for their patients, and also to help destigmatize addiction care and incorporate it into the fabric of other hospital services.”