SAMHSA is missing opportunities to better monitor access to medication-assisted treatment through the buprenorphine waiver program
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Data snapshot
- Contributor(s):
- United States. Department of Health and Human Services. Office of Inspector General. Office of Evaluation and Inspections, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, D.C. : U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, June 2021
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Buprenorphine -- supply & distribution Government Regulation Opioid Epidemic United States United States. Department of Health and Human Services
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- What OIG Did. Combating the opioid crisis by expanding treatment services is a key priority for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The Buprenorphine Waiver Program—one of SAMHSA’s primary initiatives to address this priority—authorizes 90,000 providers to provide medication-assisted treatment (MAT) to patients with opioid use disorder. However, SAMHSA does not know how many total patients actually receive MAT through the program because it does not collect this information from all enrolled providers. Instead, SAMHSA requires a subset of waivered providers— those authorized to treat the maximum number of patients allowed by law (i.e., 275)—to annually report the number of patients to whom they provided MAT. The primary purpose of this annual reporting requirement is to allow SAMHSA to monitor providers’ compliance with additional requirements in place for providers authorized at this 275-patient limit. However, because these data constitute the only such information that SAMHSA collects from waivered providers, OIG used the data to examine the waiver program’s success in a broader goal—expanding access to treatment. Although they represent only a small percentage of waivered providers, the 6,000 providers approved at the maximum patient level are important for access to MAT, because they are permitted to treat a much greater patient load and often specialize in addiction treatment. In this data snapshot, we examined how many providers submitted the required annual report during 2019. For the latest month with complete data (June 2019), we examined the number of MAT patients whom providers reported treating and whether providers located in counties with a high need for MAT services treated more patients on average than providers located outside of these areas.
- Copyright:
- The National Library of Medicine believes this item to be in the public domain. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (13 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918384886906676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918384886906676