McLellan sees addiction becoming true part of healthcare. Will providers respond sensibly?
Members of the addiction treatment community generally have not been the most vocal commentators in healthcare about the implications of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and related initiatives, and that should be surprising given this comment from one of the country's foremost authorities on addiction research and treatment:
"I don't think there's another medical condition that's as affected by what will happen with the enactment of the ACA as addiction," says A. Thomas McLellan, PhD, co-founder and CEO of the Philadelphia-based Treatment Research Institute (TRI).
McLellan, back at the nationally prominent nonprofit research organization as of early 2012 after serving as deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), adds, "I think where we're going to come out in five years is that this will be a wonderful act for patients, their families, and particularly for healthcare."
What's less certain to McLellan as part of that equation is how health reform will affect the facilities that currently make up the specialty addiction provider network. Their fate, he says, largely depends on how they respond to changes in a system that will uncover new opportunities that could erase traditional notions of what their core patient population should look like.
To McLellan, the winners will be "the swift, the smart and the flexible" who can meet the needs of new treatment populations who will be identified in an increasingly primary care-driven system. Those who will be in danger, he believes, are providers who fold their arms in anticipation of the old ways of a segregated care system becoming new again.
"I don't think the 'good ol' days' are coming back," McLellan says.
Impact of integration
Addiction is by no means the first medical condition to have been segregated from the rest of medical care. In fact, addiction treatment centers at one time in their history became a new destination for patients with another illness after its own segregated specialty care programs began to fall out of favor: that being tuberculosis.
Addiction remains a subject largely unaddressed in medical school curricula, an illness paid for largely outside of traditional medical insurance, and a societal crisis in which only about 1 in 10 of those who need some form of care receive any services, McLellan points out.
The ACA's implementation will open up avenues of reimbursement for a continuum of substance use services that includes prevention, early intervention, office-based treatment and pharmacological treatment, much as has been the case for chronic illnesses such as diabetes, he says. New markets will be created for decision support tools and medications, he says, and for providers accustomed to receiving referrals only from the justice system, new referral sources might include hospital emergency departments, specialty care medical facilities, and primary care doctors.
Continue Reading: addictionpro.com
Members of the addiction treatment community generally have not been the most vocal commentators in healthcare about the implications of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and related initiatives, and that should be surprising given this comment from one of the country's foremost authorities on addiction research and treatment:
"I don't think there's another medical condition that's as affected by what will happen with the enactment of the ACA as addiction," says A. Thomas McLellan, PhD, co-founder and CEO of the Philadelphia-based Treatment Research Institute (TRI).
McLellan, back at the nationally prominent nonprofit research organization as of early 2012 after serving as deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), adds, "I think where we're going to come out in five years is that this will be a wonderful act for patients, their families, and particularly for healthcare."
What's less certain to McLellan as part of that equation is how health reform will affect the facilities that currently make up the specialty addiction provider network. Their fate, he says, largely depends on how they respond to changes in a system that will uncover new opportunities that could erase traditional notions of what their core patient population should look like.
To McLellan, the winners will be "the swift, the smart and the flexible" who can meet the needs of new treatment populations who will be identified in an increasingly primary care-driven system. Those who will be in danger, he believes, are providers who fold their arms in anticipation of the old ways of a segregated care system becoming new again.
"I don't think the 'good ol' days' are coming back," McLellan says.
Impact of integration
Addiction is by no means the first medical condition to have been segregated from the rest of medical care. In fact, addiction treatment centers at one time in their history became a new destination for patients with another illness after its own segregated specialty care programs began to fall out of favor: that being tuberculosis.
Addiction remains a subject largely unaddressed in medical school curricula, an illness paid for largely outside of traditional medical insurance, and a societal crisis in which only about 1 in 10 of those who need some form of care receive any services, McLellan points out.
The ACA's implementation will open up avenues of reimbursement for a continuum of substance use services that includes prevention, early intervention, office-based treatment and pharmacological treatment, much as has been the case for chronic illnesses such as diabetes, he says. New markets will be created for decision support tools and medications, he says, and for providers accustomed to receiving referrals only from the justice system, new referral sources might include hospital emergency departments, specialty care medical facilities, and primary care doctors.
Continue Reading: addictionpro.com
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