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October 20, 2023
Coordinated Opioid Recovery Begins With Emergency Medical Services in Florida
A coordinated approach to recovery for individuals with substance use disorder (SUD) that largely began with the Palm Beach County, Florida, Fire Rescue’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Division is now expanding to 12 more Florida counties. The Florida Department of Health, the Florida Department of Children and Families, and Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration have developed the Coordinated Opioid Recovery (CORE) Program, which was launched in fall 2022. CORE was modeled after programs in Palm Beach County, Clay County, and Ocala, Florida, and relies on a relatively new add-on to EMS, known as community paramedics. This article profiles the CORE program in those three counties.