Gaps in Opioid Treatment Programs
Medicare began reimbursing for opioid treatment program (OTP) services for the first time in 2020 under the Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities (SUPPORT) Act. The benefit also included methadone maintenance treatment, which is restricted to OTPs.
Samantha Harris and her coauthors analyze county-level factors associated with OTPs accepting Medicare.
They find that while the new OTP benefit expanded access to an OTP or non-OTP that accepted Medicare and offered medication for opioid use disorder to nearly 7 million beneficiaries, more than 20 million beneficiaries lived in a county without an OTP that accepted Medicare. The authors identify seventy-seven counties with an OTP that did not accept Medicare.
Harris and coauthors conclude that "the odds of a county having an OTP that accepted Medicare were lower for counties with higher percentages of residents in rural areas…," pointing to rural-urban disparities in access to the Medicare OTP benefit.
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