Live-in facilities offer ‘some of the best treatment for those with severe substance use’
- First study to do apples-to-apples comparison of residential treatment use among Medicaid enrollees across several states
- Nine states represent 14.9 million people (20% of all Medicaid enrollees)
CHICAGO — Approximately 7 million adults in the U.S. are living with opioid use disorder (OUD). Yet a new Northwestern Medicine study that measured residential treatment use among Medicaid enrollees across nine states found only 7% of enrollees with OUD received residential treatment, an integral part of the recovery process for many.
“Given the worsening opioid crisis, that number seems low,” said corresponding author Lindsay Allen, a health economist and assistant professor of emergency medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We’re probably leaving effective treatment for millions on the table.”
Additionally, usage across the nine states varied widely, the study found, with some states providing residential treatment for only 0.3% of their Medicaid enrollees with OUD, and others providing up to 14.6%. The contrast in usage could be attributable to differences in insurance coverage by state, supply of facilities, and the characteristics of the states’ populations, Allen said.
“It’s disconcerting that these rates range so drastically,” Allen said. “We don’t know the ‘right’ number of people that need residential care, but it’s clearly more than what is being used.”
The findings were published April 12 in the Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment. Results from this large nine-state study add context to the ongoing national conversation around OUD treatment and policy, providing a baseline for future research.