ACA: An Opportunity for Improving Care for Substance Use Disorders?

Posted on: April 20, 2016

News & Insights From Santa Monica Psychiatrist Katherine Watkins, M.D.

Whatever your political views about The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), it clearly stands as one of the most ambitious expansion and regulatory overhauls of the U.S. health care system in our country’s history.

In terms of significance, it ranks right with the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid.

The principal goal of the law is to increase insurance coverage. However, the ACA also includes many reforms aimed at improving quality of care by holding clinicians and treatment programs financially accountable for providing high-quality services. For example, the ACA provides for the development of new performance measures for primary care and chronic diseases and establishes an Interagency Working Group on Healthcare Quality to coordinate quality-related activities across 24 federal departments and agencies.

In order to evaluate “quality,” three of my colleagues and I examined the current use of quality measures for substance use disorder treatment and then made recommendations for development of more effective measures.

Our conclusions were clear. As the landscape of health care in the United States shifts rapidly under the ACA and more Americans gain coverage for substance use disorders, there is an unparalleled opportunity to reduce the harms associated with untreated or ineffectively treated substance misuse. To realize this opportunity, we must invest in the development and application of reliable, valid, and feasible performance measures for treatment of substance use disorders. As coverage expands under the ACA, performance measures can help ensure that substance use disorder treatment is accessible and of high quality.

To read the entire article, please visit psychiatryonline.org.

Posted in: Public Policy