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The center is one of three “opioid urgent care clinics” financed by the state (the others are in Boston and Worcester) that have opened over the past couple of years in a pilot program. Each person who walks in the door undergoes an immediate assessment and receives help locating and getting to an appropriate placement, if one can be found. (Freyer, 8/20)

The addiction treatment program at Highland Hospital’s emergency room is only one way that cities and health care providers are connecting with people in unusual settings. Another is in San Francisco, where city health workers are taking to the streets to find homeless people with opioid use disorder and offering them buprenorphine prescriptions on the spot. (Goodnough, 8/18)

Every year, thousands of people addicted to opioids show up at hospital emergency rooms in withdrawal so agonizing it leaves them moaning and writhing on the floor. Usually, they’re given medicines that help with vomiting or diarrhea and sent on their way, maybe with a few numbers to call about treatment. ... Highland [Hospital E.R. in Oakland], a clattering big-city hospital where security wands constantly beep as new patients get scanned for weapons, is among a small group of institutions that have started initiating opioid addiction treatment in the E.R. (Goodnough, 8/18)

Kaiser Health News: Babies Dependent On Opioids Need Touch, Not Tech

One doctor in Kansas works to make sure every hospital in the state can provide the soft start, ideally with their mothers, that babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome need. (Smith/KCUR, 8/20)

Grim-faced Fulton County leaders assembled in their downtown Atlanta auditorium last fall to make a big announcement: the county would become the first in Georgia to sue the opioid industry for damages stemming from the nation’s deadly overdose epidemic. (Redmon, 8/17)

Doctors are looking at opioid prescriptions through a microscopic lens because since 2013, more people in Virginia have died from drug overdoses than vehicle accidents or guns, according to the Virginia Department of Health. ... As a result, the health care industry has reduced the number of opioid prescriptions, hoping to curtail “drug seekers” who may start with pain pills, which become a gateway drug to more illicit substances. But the cutback also is affecting those with legitimate pain problems. (Dyson, 8/19)

A decade after first appearing in the United States, synthetic marijuana is seen as a growing health danger. Some marijuana smokers turned to it because it is relatively cheap and not detected in routine drug testing. Dozens of people in New Haven, Connecticut, went to the hospital this week after overdosing on a batch of synthetic pot. (Stobbe, 8/17)