Massachusetts To Require All Health Plans To Provide Inpatient & Residential Addiction Treatment

On August 8, 2014, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed legislation to require all health plans in the state to automatically cover inpatient and residential addiction treatment, specifically inpatient detoxification services and up to two-weeks of post-detoxification stabilization. The legislation applies to commercial health plans and to MassHealth (the Massachusetts Medicaid program), including the MassHealth managed care contractors. Prior-authorization requirements for outpatient addiction treatment must also be removed. In the announcement, Governor Patrick said the goal is to remove barriers to treatment that some patients have experienced and gives patients and clinicians discretion over a patient’s treatment . . .