Penn Medicine integrated “nudges” into its system to get emergency department providers to ask patients about their alcohol concerns and, if needed, prescribe naltrexone, an affordable medication that reduces cravings.
“We had already done that with prescribing buprenorphine for opioid use disorder,” said Kit Delgado, an associate professor of emergency medicine who developed the new approach. “It kind of dawned on us … alcohol is something that we see so much more commonly.”