Oral

Recent health care reform legislation has the potential to make health care accessible to millions of people who have previously had little or no health care provided. Within this new population will be those with untreated or partially treated mental health and substance use disorders. The challenge to the behavioral health field is twofold: first, to provide sufficient facilities and well trained staff to treat these new clients; and second, to ensure that a holistic approach to recovery is available. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is actively engaged in the implementation of Health Care Reform legislation, both from policy and field-support perspectives. Panel presentations will focus on SAMHSA’s priorities, programs, and initiatives that support emerging trends related to health care reform. Panelists will also draw upon data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, Drug Abuse Warning Network, and the Treatment Episode Data Set to demonstrate how substance abuse and mental health usage trends are impacting the nation’s health. Topics will include: • An in-depth analysis of how the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) expansion of Medicaid coverage to childless adults will affect the behavioral health field. • The benefits of utilizing screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment as a means of identifying and treating those who are not currently accessing the treatment system. • How SAMHSA, in partnership with the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment (NIATx), is improving access and customer service in behavioral health treatment through the use of an improvement model developed specifically for the behavioral health care field. Finally, the closing presentation will describe a model for a client-centered, holistic, integrated approach to recovery from substance use disorders that recognizes the impact of the social determinants of health and addresses the issues presented by the panelists.

Session Objectives: 1. Describe how ACA’s eligibility expansion under Medicaid to childless adults will benefit childless adults with addictions. 2. Demonstrate how the NIATx process improvement model is able to improve the behavioral health care delivery system. 3. Identify areas of behavioral health concerns that have been positively impacted by the SAMHSA SBIRT programs. 4. Explain how an integrated, recovery-oriented system can increase access to treatment and successful recovery.

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH)