Researchers from Columbia University Report Details of New Studies and Findings in the Area of Managed Care (Healthcare Coverage and Service Access for Low-income Adults With Substance Use Disorders): Managed Care

2022 SEP 19 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators discuss new findings in Managed Care. According to news reporting from New York City, New York, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Although health coverage facilitates service access to adults in the general population, uncertainty exists over the extent to which this relationship extends to low-income adults with substance use disorders. The health status and service use patterns of low-income adults with substance use disorders who had continuous, discontinuous, and no past year health coverage were compared using data from the 2015-2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).”

Financial support for this research came from NIH National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from Columbia University, “The NSDUH is a nationally representative survey of the civilian non-institutionalized population. In the weighted sample (unweighted n = 9243), approximately 65.66% of low-income adults with substance use disorders had continuous coverage, 17.03% had discontinuous coverage, and 17.31% had no insurance coverage during the past year. Although few group differences were observed in self-reported health status, the uninsured group compared to the discontinously and continuously covered groups, respectively, was less likely to report a past year substance use treatment visit (11.03% vs. 14.83% vs. 15.61%), an outpatient care visit (53.39% vs. 71.27% vs. 79.04%), an emergency department visit (33.33% vs. 45.76% vs. 45.57%), or an inpatient admission (9.24% vs. 15.11% vs. 15.58%).”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Although the cross sectional design limits causal inferences, the correlations between lacking health insurance and low rates of substance use treatment and healthcare use raise the possibility that increasing healthcare coverage might increase access to substance use treatment and other needed healthcare services for low-income adults with substance use disorders.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Healthcare Coverage and Service Access for Low-income Adults With Substance Use Disorders. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 2022;137. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment can be contacted at: Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England. (Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment - http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-substance-abuse-treatment/)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Mark Olfson, Columbia University, Vagelos Coll Phys & Surg, Dept. of Psychiatry, New York, NY, United States. Additional authors for this research include Melanie M. Wall, Christine Mauro, C. Jean Choi, Ramin Mojtabai and Colleen L. Barry.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2021.108710. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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