City Wide Bed Board
City Wide Bed Board
A platform to create greater access to substance use treatment for individuals with Medicaid.

There are many barriers to accessing treatment for underserved people in Philadelphia experiencing substance use disorder. With health care navigators and advocates we identified five barriers to accessing substance use treatment to envision tools and systems that could better serve people who need them. Some of the primary challenges we’ve heard include:
- Wait times
- Cost and/or lack of insurance
- Administrative failures
- Lack of treatment resources
- Bureaucracy (e.g. requiring identification cards)
These challenges led us to envision what a real time city-wide bed board, representing up to date available beds for detox and inpatient care, could look like if all major treatment facilities in Philadelphia were to contribute to sharing this information.
What if detox and inpatient beds that fit the needs of the most vulnerable people were made easier to find? Would we save navigators and crisis response centers valuable time coordinating care?