West Virginia Medicaid Submits 1115 Waiver To Expand Addiction Treatment Options

On December 1, 2016, the West Virginia Bureau for Medicaid Services (BMS) submitted a section 1115 demonstration application to create a continuum of addiction treatment services that includes residential treatment, supportive housing arrangements, and peer services. The waiver will test the impact of providing the full continuum of addiction treatment services (particularly residential treatment) on emergency department utilization, inpatient hospital utilization, and readmission rates to the same level of care or higher. It will also assess the impact on the drug overdose death rate and the prevalence of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). The program is expected to generate savings of . . .