COLUMBIA, S.C. — What is a warmline, exactly? It's a new initiative by the South Carolina Center of Excellence in Addiction to help medical practitioners get a second opinion quicker for their patients.
"We want people who need treatment to be able to get it when they need it, in the way that they need it," Jodi Manz said.
Manz is the director of the Center of Excellence in Addiction, which works to address the overdose fatality crisis in the state.
"If folks are sitting there with whether it's a primary care doc or maybe it's a paramedic. Whoever they're encountering in that moment, if that person can help them and can get them to the place that will make a difference in their ability to access treatment , that will open new doors for that patient," Manz said.
The Center of Excellence has launched a new warmline for medical practitioners in South Carolina, available Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
"Doctors, nurses, social workers, peers, paramedics , anybody who works in the substance abuse disorder space or medical space can call to do a peer to peer consult with an experienced addiction medicine provider to ask questions about how to treat substance use disorder and opioid use disorder, how to get through some of the components of toxicology screenings, connecting people to services in the community," Manz said.
Dr. Alain Litwin is a director of the Clemson Center for Addiction and Mental Health Research, which runs the warmline.
"The magic here is that it directly benefits patients in real time, because clinician take care of patients and if you equip clinicians throughout the state with the state of the art knowledge then you're able to bring that knowledge and practice to patients," Litwin said.
According to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, in 2021, over two thousand people in the state died from a drug overdose. Dr. Litwin says this warmline will help tackle that issue.
"Treatment works and treatment is life saving. we can directly bend the curve here and start to decrease overdoses both fatal and non fatal and we can save lives," he said.
The warmline number is 864-914-1301.