A band of more than 50 advocacy groups is calling for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to increase its efforts to ensure seniors battling substance abuse disorders are given sufficient care.
“We are writing to ask that you take steps to ensure that residents of long-term care and skilled nursing facilities that are funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have access to the medications they need for evidence- based substance use treatment,” the coalition’s letter said.
Letter signers included the Drug Policy Alliance, the Opioid Policy Institute, the National Hispanic Medical Association, several state rural health associations and the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine.
Senior substance abuse disorders have been on many radars this year.
In a congressional hearing in January, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, noted that although older adults are more prone to developing substance abuse disorders than other age demographics, they often go undiagnosed.
And an annual brief from the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General discovered that approximately 52,000 Medicare beneficiaries experienced an opioid overdose in 2022. Additionally, only 18% of the 1.1 million enrollees who have opioid use disorder were given medication to treat their condition.
Both CMS and the facilities they fund are in the line of fire of the group’s call-to-action. Some operators, they say, aren’t doing their part to treat struggling patients who go mishandled — and CMS should act swiftly.
“The residential housing providers you subsidize are required to adhere to a
comprehensive set of operating regulations issued by your agency that themselves are intended to ensure their residents are free from discrimination. However, without enforcement, the law is just words,” the letter reads. “They must be able to trust you to hold their facility operators accountable.”
