As public health insurance in the United States faces potential cuts, a Rutgers University review of medical records finds that Medicaid and Medicare patients with opioid addiction tend to receive behavioral health care services less often than those with other types of funding.
“What’s most striking is how insurance type fundamentally shapes patient treatment,” said Jamey Lister, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Social Work and principal investigator of the study published in the journal Addiction Science & Clinical Practice. “We discovered that patients with public insurance alone were less likely to utilize treatment services compared to those with multiple funding sources.”
About 10% of American adults have co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders, highlighting the need for integrated treatment planning. To determine what motivates – or prevents – them from seeking care, Lister and colleagues analyzed records from patients registered at a community health center in New Jersey between 2015 and 2021, a period that coincided with the state’s Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
In collaboration with the Rutgers Health Center for Integrated Care and Trinitas Regional Medical Center, an RWJBarnabas Health clinic in Elizabeth, N.J., the researchers reviewed electronic medical records of 705 patients diagnosed with opioid use disorder. To read the full story.