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Specialty Substance Use Disorder Treatment Admissions Steadily Increased In The Four Years After Medicaid Expansion.

ABSTRACT: The Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion provided insurance coverage to many low-income adults with substance use disorders, but it is unclear whether this led to more people receiving treatment. We used the Treatment Episode Data Set and a difference-in-differences approach to compare annual rates of specialty treatment admissions in expansion versus nonexpansion states in the period 2010-17. We found that admissions to treatment steadily increased in the four years after Medicaid expansion, with 36 percent more people entering treatment by the fourth expansion year in expansion states compared to nonexpansion states. Changes were largest for people entering intensive outpatient programs and those seeking medication treatment for opioid use disorder. The share of admissions paid for by Medicaid increased 23 percentage points in expansion states compared to nonexpansion states, largely displacing treatment paid for by state and local governments. The gradual increase in specialty substance use disorder treatment admissions after Medicaid expansion may reflect improving capacity and access to care.

SUBMITTER: Saloner B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7853763 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Specialty Substance Use Disorder Treatment Admissions Steadily Increased In The Four Years After Medicaid Expansion.

Saloner Brendan B Maclean Johanna Catherine JC

Health affairs (Project Hope) 20200301 3

The Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion provided insurance coverage to many low-income adults with substance use disorders, but it is unclear whether this led to more people receiving treatment. We used the Treatment Episode Data Set and a difference-in-differences approach to compare annual rates of specialty treatment admissions in expansion versus nonexpansion states in the period 2010-17. We found that admissions to treatment steadily increased in the four years after Medicaid expansion ...[more]

PMID: 32119615

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Project description:BackgroundEffective treatment strategies exist for substance use disorder (SUD), however severe hurdles remain in ensuring adequacy of the SUD treatment (SUDT) workforce as well as improving SUDT affordability, access and stigma. Although evidence shows recent increases in SUD medication access from expanding Medicaid availability under the Affordable Care Act, it is yet unknown whether these policies also led to a growth in hiring in the SUDT related workforce, partly due to poor data availability. Our study uses novel data to shed light on recent trends in a fast-evolving and policy-relevant labor market, and contributes to understanding data sources to track the SUDT related workforce and the effect of recent state healthcare policies on the supply side of this sector.Methods and dataWe examine hiring attempts in the SUDT and related behavioral health sector over 2010-2018 to estimate the causal effect of the 2014-and-beyond state Medicaid expansions on these outcomes through "difference-in-difference" econometric models. We use Burning Glass Technologies (BGT) data covering virtually all U.S. job postings by employers.FindingsNationally, we find little growth in the sector's hiring attempts in 2010-2018 relative to the rest of the economy or to health care as a whole. However, this masks heterogeneity in the bimodal trend in SUDT job postings, with some increases in most years but a decrease in 2014 and in 2017, as well as a shift in emphasis between different occupational categories. Medicaid expansion, however, is not associated with any statistically significant change in overall hiring attempts in the SUDT related sector during this time period, although there is moderate evidence of increases among primary care physicians.ConclusionsAlthough hiring attempts in the SUDT related sector as measured by the number of job advertisements have not grown substantially over time, there was a shift in the hiring landscape. Many national factors including reimbursement policy may play a role in incentivizing demand for the SUDT related workforce, but our research does not show that recent state Medicaid expansion was one such statistically detectable factor. Future research is needed to understand how aggregate labor demand signals translate into actual increases in SUDT workforce and availability.

Project description:The Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion created new financial opportunities for community health centers (CHCs) providing primary care in medically-underserved communities. However, beyond evidence of initial policy effects, little is understood in the scholarly literature about whether the ACA Medicaid expansion affected longer-lasting changes in CHC patient insurance mix. This study's objective was to examine whether the ACA Medicaid expansion was associated with lasting increases in the annual percentage of adult CHC patients covered by Medicaid and decreases in the annual percentage of uninsured adult CHC patients at expansion-state CHCs, compared to non-expansion-state CHCs. This observational study examined 5353 CHC-year observations from 2012 to 2018 using Uniform Data System data and other national data sources. Using a 2-way fixed-effects multivariable regression approach and marginal analysis, intermediate-term policy effects of the Medicaid expansion on annual CHC patient coverage outcomes were estimated. By 5-years post-expansion, the Medicaid expansion was associated with an overall average increase of 11.7 percentage points in the percentage of adult patients with Medicaid coverage at expansion-state CHCs, compared to non-expansion-state CHCs. Among expansion-state CHCs, 39.8% of adult patients were predicted to have Medicaid coverage 5-years post-expansion, compared to 19.0% of non-expansion-state adult CHC patients. A state's decision to expand Medicaid was similarly associated with decreases in the annual percentage of uninsured adult CHC patients. Primary care operations at CHCs critically depend on patient Medicaid revenue. These findings suggest the ACA Medicaid expansion may provide longer-term financial security for expansion-state CHCs, which maintain increases in Medicaid-covered adult patients even 5-years post-expansion. However, these financial securities may be jeopardized should the ACA be ruled unconstitutional in 2021, a year after CHCs experienced new uncertainties caused by COVID-19.

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Specialty Substance Use Disorder Treatment Admissions Steadily Increased In The Four Years After Medicaid Expansion.

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Specialty Substance Use Disorder Treatment Admissions Steadily Increased In The Four Years After Medicaid Expansion.

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