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Quick Facts:
Lebanon
Mercy Hospital Lebanon has piloted a program that is helping patients struggling with opioid use disorder. Results have been so promising that it’s expanding in scope after just six months. Leaders in Washington, D.C., have taken notice.
Starting in September 2025, Mercy Hospital Lebanon launched a bridge clinic through its emergency department for patients with opioid use disorder. Historically, when patients arrive at the ED with opioid withdrawal symptoms or an overdose, their immediate medical needs are addressed before they are discharged and referred to a psychiatrist. It can then take days or weeks to find an appointment with a doctor, patients’ chances of relapsing increase and they often end up back in the hospital.
“While we’re meeting their most urgent medical needs in the ED, we’re not providing them the support and medicine they need to get through the first few days of opioid withdrawal, and those first 72 hours are crucial,” said Jenn Speer, executive director of operations at Mercy Hospital Lebanon.
Speer is leading Mercy Lebanon’s new opioid treatment program, which is doing two key things differently. Now when a patient comes to the ED due to opioid overdose or withdrawal, Mercy caregivers provide a free, three days of buprenorphine – medication used to treat opioid use disorder – and schedule the patient for a follow-up visit with Mercy’s Virtual Substance Use Recovery Program (VSURP) no more than 72 hours later.
By scheduling patients with virtual support and providing an immediate supply of medication to address withdrawal symptoms, Mercy is bridging the gap in care that causes so many patients to relapse.
“Virtual support means patients can get care faster, and they don’t have to worry about transportation, taking time off work or the cost of gas, all of which are barriers we often see patients struggle with,” said Dustin Smith, a physician with Mercy’s VSURP.
On average, patients who turn to Mercy’s VSURP for support in their opioid recovery remain with the program for 230 days – an indication of just how long it can take some patients to overcome their addiction.
In the six months since Mercy Hospital Lebanon launched the new opioid treatment program, it has already seen success. Speer says 30% of patients engage with the program, which exceeds what Speer and her team anticipated. The VSURP team is also tracking patient referrals from Lebanon. Before the program launched, VSURP only had 10 referrals over several years from Mercy’s hospitals in southwest Missouri. Lebanon matched that number in the first month after rolling out the new program.
Now with a proven track record, Mercy is expanding the program into nearby rural communities including Aurora, Cassville, Carthage and Mountain View, funded in part by a $300,000 grant through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The federal grant helps fund the cost of training ED caregivers on how to prescribe buprenorphine along with the costs of the medications themselves, including Narcan – a common overdose medication – and Zofran, which helps reduce the nausea that frequently comes with withdrawal. This funding also helps provide virtual care carts for each facility and helps Mercy provide this service at a low cost to the patients in each community.
Speer and her team meet virtually with HRSA monthly to show success, and the administration was so impressed by the early results coming out of Lebanon that they invited Speer’s team to present their work in D.C. The event brought together all 42 grantees from across the United States who took part in HRSA’s Rural Community Opioid Response Program. Mercy Hospital Lebanon was one of 10 grantees selected to present its program in an innovation tank. Event attendees voted on the most innovative, creative and impactful programs, and Mercy’s new opioid treatment program took third place in the event.
“HRSA was really impressed by how we were leveraging big-city medicine to benefit our rural communities,” Speer said. “Many communities Mercy cares for are rural, so it’s important we identify the unique needs of each community and meet our patients where they are. This approach to opioid treatment is a great example of how we can do that effectively.”
