There’s a state-run addiction program with an actual office on 15th Street in Panama City, and most people in Bay County have never heard of it. It’s called the Coordinated Opioid Recovery Network, CORE for short, and it’s been quietly operating here for a while.
How It’s Supposed to Work
CORE was built around a specific failure in how overdoses usually get handled. Someone overdoses, gets revived, gets discharged from the ER, and goes right back into the exact situation that led to the overdose in the first place, often with nothing more than a pamphlet to show for the visit. CORE tries to break that cycle at three points. First responders and emergency departments in CORE counties are set up to stabilize someone and route them specifically toward addiction-trained care instead of a standard discharge. From there, the network is supposed to connect that person to actual ongoing treatment, not just crisis response. And it wraps in the things that quietly derail recovery even when the addiction piece is being addressed, primary care, psychiatric care, dental care, even maternal health and housing support for people who need it.
Why the State Built It This Way
Florida officials have been blunt about the reasoning: standard treatment approaches, especially ones that only activate during a medical emergency, haven’t produced lasting recovery on their own. Addiction gets treated like a single event instead of the chronic condition it actually is, and people cycle through emergency rooms without anything changing about what happens after they leave. CORE exists because that pattern kept repeating and nobody was tracking a person past the moment they stopped being an emergency.
It’s Grown Faster Than Most People Realize
CORE started as a pilot in Palm Beach County in 2022. It’s now active in 47 counties, covering about 96 percent of Florida’s population, funded largely through the state’s opioid settlement money. Bay County has been part of it for a while now, with a local office at 2309 15th Street here in Panama City. This isn’t a small experimental program anymore. It’s close to statewide infrastructure that a lot of people qualify for and don’t know exists.
What CORE Doesn’t Cover
CORE is a coordination system, not a treatment center. It’s built to catch someone at the point of crisis and point them toward the right kind of ongoing care, but it doesn’t run detox beds or residential programs itself. The actual treatment still has to happen somewhere, with a provider equipped to handle it. It’s the referral system, not the building where the work gets done.
That distinction matters if you’re trying to figure out how to actually use this. If someone in your family has been through an ER visit for an overdose in Bay County, CORE may already be the reason they got connected to next steps. If nobody has offered that yet, or if you’re trying to get ahead of a crisis rather than react to one, that’s where an actual treatment provider comes in.
You Don’t Need an Overdose to Use This
If you’re navigating this for yourself or someone you love, knowing CORE exists is useful, but it isn’t the whole answer. Florida Springs Wellness and Recovery Center is in Panama City, and our residential program is exactly the kind of ongoing care CORE is designed to connect people toward, whether you came through that system or found us directly. Most people only hear about CORE after an ER visit. You can call before it gets to that point.
