Harvard Medical School Researcher Publishes New Studies and Findings in the Area of Health Policy (Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Substance Use Treatment in Medicaid Managed Care in New York City): Health Policy

2023 SEP 12 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- New research on health policy is the subject of a new report. According to news reporting originating from Boston, Massachusetts, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “The aim was to assess the magnitude of health care disparities in treatment for substance use disorder (SUD) and the role of health plan membership and place of residence in observed disparities in Medicaid Managed Care (MMC) plans in New York City (NYC). Data Source: Medicaid claims and managed care plan enrollment files for 2015-2017 in NYC.”

The news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Harvard Medical School: “Research We studied Medicaid enrollees with a SUD diagnosis during their first 6 months of enrollment in a managed care plan in 2015-2017. A series of linear regression models quantified service disparities across race/ethnicity for 5 outcome indicators: treatment engagement, receipt of psychosocial treatment, follow-up after withdrawal, rapid readmission, and treatment continuation. We assessed the degree to which plan membership and place of residence contributed to observed disparities. We found disparities in access to treatment but the magnitude of the disparities in most cases was small. Plan membership and geography of residence explained little of the observed disparities. One exception is geography of residence among Asian Americans, which appears to mediate disparities for 2 of our 5 outcome measures.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Reallocating enrollees among MMC plans in NYC or evolving trends in group place of residence are unlikely to reduce disparities in treatment for SUD. System-wide reforms are needed to mitigate disparities.”

For more information on this research see: Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Substance Use Treatment in Medicaid Managed Care in New York City. Medical Care, 2022,60(11). The publisher for Medical Care is Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health).

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0000000000001768.

Our news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Cole Weaver, Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States. Additional authors for this research include Margarita Alegria, Irene Falgas-Bague, Marie Fukuda, Jenny Zhen-Duan, Isabel O’Malley, Timothy Layton, Jacob Wallace, Lulu Zhang, Sheri Markle, Pat Lincourt, Shazia Hussain, Roberto Lewis-Fernandez, Dolly A. John, Thomas McGuire.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)