SAMHSA Releases Recovery Home Best Practices and Guidance
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) this week
releasedbest practices and suggested guidelines for recovery housing.
Last year’s
Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment (SUPPORT) for Patients and Communities Act requires the HHS secretary to identify or facilitate developing best practices for recovery housing. SAMHSA’s report this week identifies 10 guiding principles to help states and federal policymakers both define and understand what comprises safe, effective, and legal recovery housing.
In its guidance, SAMHSA noted the document is intended to provide a framework that builds on and extends the policy and practice work that has guided the development of recovery housing until now. The guidelines’ 10 areas include having a clear operational definition, recognizing that a substance use disorder (SUD) is a chronic condition that requires a range of recovery supports, promoting and using evidence-based practices, and ensuring quality, integrity, and patient safety.
MACPAC Releases Draft Report on Oversight of IMDs
The Medicaid and CHIP Payment Access Commission (MACPAC) recently released its draft
report on the oversight of Institutions for Mental Diseases (IMDs) a few months ahead of the commission’s January 2020 deadline for its final report to Congress.
Divided into five chapters— 1) history and federal regulation, 2) services provided, 3) regulation and oversight of IMDs and outpatient behavioral health facilities, 4) Medicaid standards for behavioral health facilities, and protections for patients in IMDs, and 5) outpatient behavioral health facilities—the 24-page report includes key findings but does not offer recommendations.
NABH sent MACPAC a
letter about the regulatory environment at IMDs in late May as part of the commission’s process to develop the report.
Kaiser Permanente Pledges $2.75 Million in Research Funding to Prevent Childhood Trauma
Not-for-profit health plan Kaiser Permanente this week announced it will invest $2.75 million in new research to study childhood trauma and its effect on total health.
In an announcement, Kaiser noted the study’s purpose is prevent and mitigate the health effects of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. ACEs are traumatic childhood events that occur before the age of 18 across multiple categories, including abuse, neglect, household dysfunction, systemic racism, and living in a high-crime neighborhood.
“Our landmark research on ACEs brought new understanding to the long-term impacts of childhood trauma, and we are now expanding our work with the bold ambition to prevent and minimize ACEs— and create healthier and more resilient generations in the future,” Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO Bernard Tyson said in the announcement.
One main goal for the new research effort is to provide insights for both clinical and community-based interventions to help address ACEs.
Health Affairs Examines the Effects of Violence on Health
In its latest issue, the journal
Health Affairs this week examined the many ways violence affects health and concluded it is the “daily burden of violence in its many forms” that takes a greater toll on people.
Introducing the Violence & Health
issue, editor Alan Weil noted there were 2.3 million violence-related emergency department visits in 2017, of which 5 percent were due to firearms. He added that healthcare is the sector with the highest rate of workplace violence.
The current issue includes two papers that examine the consequences of exposure to violence based on in-person surveys of 500 adults in two violent Chicago neighborhoods. From those findings, the authors concluded that exposure to violence relates to being in a state of hypervigilance, which carries with it negative health consequences.
“Exposure to violence increases the odds of hypervigilance, with exposure to police violence associated with an almost 10-percentage-point increase,” Weil noted, adding that a separate paper in the issue found that exposure to neighborhood violence increases social isolation and loneliness.
The issue also includes a paper that explores the relationship between alcohol misuse and subsequent arrest for intimate partner violence.
National Addiction Treatment Week is October 21-27, 2019
The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) will host
National Addiction Treatment Week from October 21-27, 2019 to raise awareness about the gap in certified addiction medicine care and treatment.
The week is also meant to expand the qualified workforce and build awareness around the important need for clinicians to enter the field of addiction medicine.
To participate, follow @TreatmentWeek on Twitter and use #hashtag #TreatmentWeek to share your messages about addiction care and treatment.
Register Today for the NABH 2020 Annual Meeting!
Registration has opened for the NABH 2020 Annual Meeting,
Expanding Access: Right Care. Right Setting. Right Time.
Please visit NABH’s Annual Meeting
homepage today to register for the Annual Meeting and also make your hotel reservation at the Mandarin Oriental Washington, DC from March 16-18, 2020.
We hope to see you next March!
Fact of the Week
A new study posted in
Psychiatry Online shows any involvement between family members and inpatient staff was significantly associated with patients’ attending an outpatient appointment by seven days after discharge.
For questions or comments about CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond.
