Riverbend spokesperson Matt Myers noted that among those who were discharged, 44 of them later got into a detox program through Riverbend and LGH follow-up efforts.

One of the barriers to reaching people outside of the emergency department, Solimini said, is that many of those who come into LGH with substance abuse issues don’t have common forms of communication like a phone or email. Through the program, though, those who do meet with Solimini can be provided with a cellphone, as well as a bag with essentials like new clothes, underwear and hygiene products, regardless of the outcome of that meeting.

“People accept this bag and they start crying, because nobody has given them anything in years,” said Solimini.

Solimini works out of the Bridge Clinic, which neighbors the emergency department in the LGH Saints Campus. He said he has a similar “lived experience” to many of the patients he interacts with, which is a major component of what makes a recovery coach model effective.

“I am in their world a little, I understand what they are going through,” said Solimini.

This pilot program is being funded through a $250,000 Linkages to Care Grant through Rize Massachusetts, with the money intended “to strengthen linkages between levels or types of care by utilizing engagement strategies, removing barriers to access, and fostering shared care management,” according to Riverbend’s announcement of the grant funding last year.

Associate Chief Nursing Officer Tracie McPadden said LGH has been working to “transform access” for patients coming into the emergency room with behavioral health issues or problems with substance abuse, and this pilot program has been a part of that. Doctors and nurses are helpful in their own right for these issues, but McPadden said recovery coaches like Solimini, who have gone through the same things their patients are experiencing, goes a long way.

“You can have the sweetest nurse and nicest doctors, but there really is some magic when a recovery coach comes in,” said McPadden.

LGH Chief of Emergency Medicine Jonathan Drake said that for a lot of people in Greater Lowell suffering from substance abuse, they did not recognize that they needed help, and if they did, help was difficult to come by.

“Prior to our partnership with Riverbend, unfortunately in Lowell there are a lot of substance use disorders, and a lot of patients present to the ED intoxicated on drugs or alcohol who may not have recognized they needed help, or if they were accepting, it was a challenge to get them treatment,” said Drake. “With Riverbend, it has done a full 180.”

With one year of the pilot program and Solimini meticulously collecting data, the hope among Riverbend and LGH officials is that the program can be expanded, both to have more people working within it and to offer recovery coach services in other hospitals, within the Tufts Medicine network and beyond.