Opioids

As the U.S. tries to address rising rates of mental health issues, the impact of the new 988 national crisis hotline and other innovations will be limited if states don’t have the underlying crisis services available when people are directed to them. The core crisis services include crisis hotlines that…

KFF surveyed state Medicaid officials about behavioral health policies related to administration, delivery systems, integrated care, and data analytics.

To better understand the variation in access to behavioral health services for adults in Medicaid, KFF surveyed state Medicaid officials about behavioral health benefits covered for adult enrollees in their fee-for-service programs.

State Medicaid programs saw a doubling of prescriptions for medications used to treat Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) or rapidly reverse opioid overdoses from 2016 to 2019, finds a new KFF analysis. KFF analysts studied the latest available Medicaid claims data — detailed and comprehensive administrative data that can help answer…

This analysis builds on previous KFF work by using Medicaid claims data for 2016-2019 to explore how prescriptions for opioids used to treat pain and those used to treat OUD or rapidly reverse overdose changed across states and Medicaid enrollee demographic groups over time.