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Nearly 90% of patients who manage to survive an opioid overdose don’t get the follow-up addiction treatment they desperately need. Treatment shouldn’t be a reward, it should be a right, and nearly 9 in every 10 people are robbed of that.
However, all it takes is one person to start the change towards better, and for Alameda County and the citizens of Oakland, that is Dr. Andrew Herring. Instead of hiding in his office behind hard-to-schedule appointments, insurance restrictions, and mounds of paperwork, he meets the patients when and where they need it the most, ready to help: right after the overdose and in the emergency room.
Herring graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed his residency in emergency medicine at Highland Hospital in Oakland, where he is now an attending emergency physician and Chief of Addiction Medicine, leading a national movement to transform healthcare for substance use and addiction.
Our Current System
Across the U.S., traditional opioid care models often require patients to detox before receiving medications like buprenorphine or demand referrals that delay treatment for days, if not weeks. This drawn-out process becomes frustrating and even dangerous for many overdose victims who need treatment as soon as possible.
Herring understands the urgency in a way that most of the system doesn’t. As he put it in a California Healthline interview, “At any point in time, they’re just a balloon that’s going to go. You might only have this one interaction. And the question is, how powerful can you make it?”
To him, each patient is not just another file on his desk with vital numbers and an Insurance ID; they are real people who need real help. That means acting fast with no waiting, no red tape, just help when people need it most. While most systems hesitate, he gets to work right there in the ER, no matter who, what, where, or when.
The Bridge Initiative
Set on this mission, Herring recognized the importance of emergency treatment for opioid overdoses. Emergency departments are often the only source of care for the 27 million uninsured Americans, yet few realize how critical they are. Herring recognized that patients who survive an overdose shouldn’t have to rely on hard-to-schedule follow-up visits to start recovery.
Through his co-founding of the CA Bridge initiative, he brought addiction treatment directly into the ER with same-day medications like buprenorphine, including long-lasting injections that give patients a real chance to stabilize and remove the obstacle of having to schedule regular appointments.
Among participating sites across California, the Public Health Institute estimates 236,000 patients have been seen for substance use disorders, 176,000 identified with opioid use disorder, and 78,000 provided buprenorphine during emergency visits. Huge numbers.
Herring’s work is a powerful reminder that life-saving care does not have to wait. By transforming emergency rooms into the first line of addiction treatment, he is proving that recovery begins the moment someone reaches for help, not weeks later, when it may be too late.
The success of CA Bridge shows that with the right approach, countless lives can be stabilized and saved, even in the face of a national opioid crisis. It challenges all of us, from communities to healthcare systems and policymakers, to rethink how we respond to addiction and to act with the same urgency Herring brings to every patient, because addiction is not a moral failure—it’s a medical emergency, and it’s time we treated it like one.
This article was written as part of a program to educate youth and others about Alameda County’s opioid crisis, prevention and treatment options. The program is funded by the Alameda County Behavioral Health Department and the grant is administered by Three Valleys Community Foundation.
