Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279), awarded $709,085 to the University of Colorado-Denver for an implementation research trial commencing April 1, 2026, and concluding January 31, 2031. This project delivers implementation facilitation services and clinical intervention support designed to expand in-hospital opioid treatment program (OTP) intakes for hospitalized patients with opioid use disorder (OUD). The study employs a staircase cluster randomized design across four hospital sites to test whether facilitating the completion of federally compliant OTP intake medical evaluations by hospital-based addiction clinicians during hospitalization increases linkage to outpatient methadone treatment following discharge. Current standard practice achieves only a 40 percent linkage rate, whereas preliminary evidence indicates that completing OTP intakes in-hospital improves linkage to 77 percent. The project capitalizes on recent federal regulatory changes that permit non-OTP affiliated clinicians to complete required medical evaluations, addressing patient-reported barriers such as opioid withdrawal, transportation limitations, and stigma that impede treatment engagement.

The implementation trial will generate evidence-based protocols, clinical workflows, and facilitation strategies that hospital systems can adopt to improve the treatment cascade for individuals with OUD. By reducing barriers to methadone access during the critical hospitalization touchpoint, this research addresses the significant gap wherein fewer than five percent of an estimated 7.6 million Americans with OUD receive methadone treatment despite its documented 50 percent mortality reduction benefit when taken regularly. The deliverables include data on implementation outcomes, clinical effectiveness measures, and translatable implementation frameworks suitable for broader adoption across hospital-based addiction medicine programs.