Testing the Feasibility of Performance Measures for Medication Assisted Treatment for Substance Use Disorders in the Public Sector

It is expected coverage for substance use disorders will expand under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In turn, it is also expected that there will be an uptake in the use of medication assisted treatment (MAT) under both public payors and private insurers as a standard of care. The intent of this study was to describe the development of national performance measures for MAT as well as 5 States' ability to extract public data to calculate the draft measures. Generally, of the 5 States that participated in the study, most were able to capture data and report on measures related to opioid medications. Amongst opioid treatment patients, States were better at capturing information about methadone than buprenorphine. Unlike opioid MAT, with one exception, States' ability to capture services related to alcohol medications appeared quite limited. In addition, States appeared more able to capture measures that align with earlier stages in the MAT process but were more challenged when patients taper or stop medication maintenance. If the treatment of substance use disorders is to continue to be provided through traditional specialty care programs, there is a need for a much stronger Federal role to support the implementation of data infrastructures that can monitor evidence-based treatment services for public clients.