The Massachusetts Medical Society
appreciates the opportunity to provide comment on several bills before the
committee related to the treatment of persons with substance use disorder. The
Medical Society has made addressing the opioid epidemic a top priority over the
past two years, and looks forward to another fruitful session partnering with
you and your colleagues to address this issue.
At the most recent meeting of the
Medical Society’s House of Delegates, the membership again made opioid-related
policy its highest priority, with new policy specifically addressing new treatment
models, naloxone access, and medical assisted treatments, including in houses
of correction.
The
Medical Society is pleased to offer its strong support to Sen. Keenan’s Senate
bill 1101, An Act Improving Access to Naloxone. The Medical Society strongly supports
removing barriers to naloxone. In fact, at the annual meeting last month,
membership passed policy explicitly charging the Society to continue work with
relevant organizations to promote awareness of the naloxone standing order to
physicians, pharmacists, and patients. We believe this bill, which would
clarify a common point of confusion at the pharmacy counter—to which person to
bill and what “patient” information should be collected—would help eliminate
yet another barrier in the complex policy matrix surrounding naloxone
prescribing and dispensing.
The Medical Society also recently
adopted policy to support state and county inmates with opioid use disorders
have access to the full spectrum of evidenced-based recovery support services,
including all medication-assisted treatments (MAT) covered on the MassHealth
formulary and transition plans for post-release care. The Medical Society supports Sen. Keenan’s Senate Bill 1102, An Act to
expand addiction treatment within houses of correction, to promote MAT
pilots in house of correction, and hopes that it can be expanded or combined
with other initiatives to promote the entire continuum of MAT treatments in
those settings.
The
Medical Society also supports expansion of the coverage treatment mandate from
14 days to 28 or 30 days, as proposed in House Bill 2394 and Senate Bill 1103. The Medical Society believes that
patients for whom inpatient treatment has been deemed medically necessary,
there should not be unnecessary prior authorizations to prohibit access to good
treatment. The expansion of services covered by this statute to include
medically necessary transitional support services, as included in Senate Bill
1103, is also an important step forward in assuring proper treatment of
substance use disorder in the Commonwealth.
The Medical Society continues to stress
the importance of education and prevention of addiction, especially in the
youth and adolescent populations. This will be especially important given the
impending commercial recreational marijuana industry in the state. For these reasons, we strongly support Sen.
Flanagan’s Senate Bill 1096, An Act to prevent adolescent substance use.
We thank you for your attention to the
positions of the Mass Medical Society and it’s over 25,000 physician and
student members. We welcome the
opportunity to work with the Chairs and members of the Mental Health, Substance
Use and Recovery Committee on these and other matters before the Committee in
this session.
