Opioid Crisis Response Law Enacted

Medpage reports that the Senate today easily passed the bipartisan opioid crisis response bill (H.R. 6)  thereby sending bill to the President to be signed into law.

Some of the provisions in the bill, which the House passed last week, include:

• Giving Medicare beneficiaries more information on alternative pain treatments, and expanding treatment options for enrollees who are addicted to opioids, while expanding treatment options for opioid-addicted beneficiaries.
• Partially repealing the the Medicaid Institutions for Mental Diseases (IMD) exclusion, which will allow state Medicaid programs to cover inpatient treatment in residential facilities.
• Allowing mothers undergoing addiction treatment to have their young children stay with them, and increasing accessibility of family residential treatment programs, which allows more parents to get help while still caring for their children in a supervised setting.
• Requiring state Medicaid programs to have safety edits in place for opioid refills, to monitor concurrent prescribing of opioids and certain other drugs, and to monitor antipsychotic prescribing for children.
• Directing the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to issue guidance to states on options for providing services via telehealth that address substance use disorders under Medicaid.
• Accelerating the development and use of drug management programs for at-risk beneficiaries within the Medicare program by mandating that all prescription drug plans use such a program by 2022.
• Requiring FDA to develop evidence-based opioid analgesic prescribing guidelines for the indication-specific treatment of acute pain.