The Affordable Care Act

An Opportunity for Improving Care for Substance Use Disorders?

Published In: Psychiatric Services, v. 66, no. 3, Mar. 2015, p. 310-312

Posted on RAND.org on December 08, 2014

by Katherine E. Watkins, Carrie M. Farmer, David De Vries, Kimberly A. Hepner

Read More

Access further information on this document at ps.psychiatryonline.org

This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.

Research Question

  1. Are existing quality measures adequate to assess quality of care for substance use disorders?

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) will greatly increase coverage for treatment of substance use disorders. To realize the benefits of this opportunity, it is critical to develop reliable, valid, and feasible measures of quality to ensure that treatment is accessible and of high quality. The authors review the availability of current quality measures for substance use disorder treatment and conclude there is a pressing need for development, validation, and use of quality measures. They provide recommendations for research and policy changes to increase the likelihood that patients, families, and society benefit from the increased coverage provided by the ACA.

Key Findings

  • Existing quality measures for substance use treatment are sparse, of limited scope, and do not reflect the current science about treatment effectiveness.
  • The few measures that have been endorsed have not been strongly linked to clinical outcomes.
  • The Affordable Care Act (ACA) could expand coverage for substance abuse treatment without providing measures to assess the quality of care.

Recommendation

  • Reaping the benefits of expanded coverage under the ACA will require developing quality measures for substance use treatment.
Access further information on this document at ps.psychiatryonline.org

This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.

This report is part of the RAND Corporation external publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.