The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is making $10 million available for each of Fiscal Years 2021 to 2024, for healthcare entities providing opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment services to Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries. OUD services for dual eligibles – those patients enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid – may also apply for funding.
The funding stream is made available under the Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act (the SUPPORT Act), which was signed into law in 2018.
The four-year demonstration project creates two new payments to participating providers: 1) a per beneficiary per month care management fee and 2) a performance-based incentive payment. The new payments are in addition to opioid use disorder treatment services Medicare currently covers.
CMS says participants may use the payments to furnish services that “have a reasonable expectation of improving or maintaining the health or overall function of participating beneficiaries.”
Funding is open to: individual physicians, group practices comprised of at least one physician or nurse practitioner, hospital outpatient departments, federally qualified health centers, rural health clinics, community mental health centers, certified community behavioral health clinics, opioid treatment programs, and critical access hospitals.
Eligible participants can apply from now until January 3, 2021, and those selected to receive grants are expected to implement the demonstration by April 1, 2021, at which point payments will also start.
For more information, and to apply,
click here.