Medicaid enrollees in the Southeast U.S. exhibited the greatest disparities between county-level opioid use disorder rates and estimated capacity for opioid use disorder treatment, according to recent findings.
“In 2012, only Fulton County in Georgia had any opioid treatment programs that accepted Medicaid insurance,” Amanda J. Abraham, PhD, of University of Georgia, Athens, said in a press release. “Thus, there is no access to treatment for Medicaid enrollees in rural counties in Georgia, and similar disparities exist across the Southeast.
To assess county-level geographic variation in treatment admissions among opioid treatment programs that accept Medicaid, researchers analyzed data from the 2012 National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services.
Of the 1,151 opioid treatment programs included in the study, 744 (64.6%) accepted Medicaid.
Source: Healio.com – April 17, 2017
