Pictured: Mercedes Patee.
Meet a CA Bridge Connect Lead – Cultivating Stronger Crisis Response Systems Across the State
“What makes this helpline different,” said Mercedes Patee, MD, “is that real people are on the other end of the line. There’s collaboration and openness for CA Bridge Connect to become what it needs to be to serve the right people with the right care. That’s what sets it apart.”
Patee is one of ten new CA Bridge Connect Leads, health providers dedicated to expanding access to addiction treatment in their region, including medications for addiction treatment (MAT). In addition to promoting the helpline among their communities, CA Bridge Connect Leads also work to foster the growth of their region’s Rapid MAT Networks and local substance use disorder (SUD) crisis response systems.
These networks and response systems are what enable CA Bridge Connect to link people to same-day substance use care, either via telehealth or directly in their local community. When someone calls or texts the helpline, they reach a Navigator who assesses their needs and explores the CA Bridge Connect network for low-barrier providers and resources.
Patee has long held an important role in that network. In 2018, she was an emergency department (ED) physician in Redding, CA; in her own time, she worked a few hours a week at a small local MAT clinic in the area. When CA Bridge began working with her ED to implement a low-barrier MAT model – ensuring connection to such medications as buprenorphine, for example for patients in pain from withdrawal – Patee quickly rose as the MAT champion for her hospital.
After five years, however, she’d learn that the small MAT clinic she supported every month would be closing – leaving 60+ patients in her surrounding community without the substance use support they relied on. She worried her patients wouldn’t be able to find the rapid, low-barrier care they needed.
So, Patee opened her own MAT clinic. With both in-person and tele-health capabilities, she not only began serving those patients who initially lost services, but also people seeking support across 24 other surrounding California counties.
The relationship-building required for setting up her own clinic set the perfect foundation for her work as a CA Bridge Connect Lead.
“Anyone who was working in recovery, I went straight to their door – from residential treatment, to transitional housing, and beyond,” Patee said. “I asked everyone I could about what they did and how they did it, the rules, the regulations. The whole community came together, championed us, and welcomed us into the substance use support space. I spent so much time meeting people and building relationships early on, and that has been my go-to approach ever since.”
Patee has leveraged all of these relationships, and more, in her new CA Bridge Connect Lead role. Among the regions she serves, she has promoted the helpline to both direct and non-direct SUD support spaces. In addition to hospitals, residential and detox centers, and justice-involved settings, she’s worked with paramedics to ensure they hand out the helpline number at appropriate sites. She’s explored ways to promote CA Bridge Connect in local bus stations. She’s worked with the county child welfare system to discuss how to make the helpline readily available to any client who might need it. She’s even connected with administrative offices that provide state ID services, which is just one barrier of many that people often face at the start of engaging in addiction treatment services.
“There are three groups that I’ve divided this outreach for,” Patee said, “and those groups include the people who need help, the people who help them, and the partners who receive referrals to provide that help. Those referral partners are really at the heart of my efforts. I want to make sure that the Navigator who picks up the call to CA Bridge Connect, from any county, with any unique situation or barrier, has exactly the right resource at their fingertips to help the person on the other end of the line.”
“I want the system and the network to be so effective,” she said, “to be such a safety net, that people know immediately – this works.”
Learn More
CA Bridge Connect is convening Rapid MAT Networks for addiction treatment, including outpatient clinics, EDs, telehealth providers, county behavioral health, emergency medical services (EMS), justice-involved settings, street medicine, community-based organizations, and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC). These networks bring together local providers, navigators, and champions to expand low-barrier MAT access as part of a comprehensive local SUD crisis response system.
Contact CA Bridge Connect to join the network.