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DDAP

Dr. Michael Lynch, UPMC Health Plan’s Medical Director of Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Services, has been named Medical Director of the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs. Dr. Lynch also serves as Medical Director of the Pittsburgh Poison Center.

DDAP has not yet officially announced Dr. Lynch’s position but is planning to. Yesterday, Dr. Lynch announced his position on LinkedIn, which indicates he will continue in his other current roles.

UPMC Health Plan is the commercial insurance arm of UPMC. Community Care Behavioral Health, UPMC’s behavioral health managed care organization, is a sister company. Both UPMC and Community Care Behavioral Health are RCPA members.

The Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs (DDAP) recently updated its Department Funding web page to include documents outlining how the department is spending its funding by source, including:

  • Supplemental Funding;
  • Substance Abuse Prevention & Treatment Block Grant Supplemental Funding;
  • American Rescue Plan;
  • State Opioid Response II;
  • McKinsey Settlement; and
  • Medical Marijuana Revenue.

DDAP will update this page as new funding sources are announced.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Following the Commonwealth Court’s decision to deny the Drug and Alcohol Service Providers Organization of Pennsylvania’s (DASPOP) request for a preliminary injunction against key pieces of the ASAM transition, the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs (DDAP) participated in RCPA’s Drug and Alcohol Committee meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 14. You can read the court’s opinion here.

Despite establishing a deadline by which providers must align with the ASAM Criteria, including the “PA-Specific Alignment Requirements,” and in particular referencing the changes in IOP ratio, daily therapeutic hours, and credentialing as “PA-Specific Alignment Requirements” of the ASAM transition on its website, DDAP argued in court that these are “guidelines,” not requirements. The challenge for providers, however, is that the single county authorities (SCAs) and behavioral health managed care organizations (BHMCOs) have signaled all along that they will require providers to comply with these pieces of the ASAM transition through contracts. Now, DDAP’s pivot to calling them “guidelines” has created confusion among providers and payers. RCPA has contacted each of the five BHMCOs and the Pennsylvania Association of County Drug and Alcohol Administrators (PACDAA) to ask whether DDAP’s testimony and the court’s decision will change their approach to enforcing the guidelines/mandates in question through their contracts. We will pass along any relevant information we may receive. In addition, DDAP told us it will be issuing guidance and clarification on these guidelines right before or after the new year.

At RCPA’s D&A Committee meeting last week, DDAP Deputy Secretary Ellen DiDomenico explained how ASAM explicitly defines its criteria versus DDAP’s interpretation of that criteria and what it is now calling recommended guidelines. For example, while the ASAM Criteria explicitly calls for daily clinical hours, DDAP has established six to eight daily therapeutic hours as the application of ASAM’s criteria in Pennsylvania. As DDAP has communicated all along, Deputy Secretary DiDomenico explained that if providers can demonstrate the ability to provide individualized care in ways other than what DDAP “recommends,” it will consider those.

DDAP also said at the meeting that nothing has changed with the court’s decision, which we would interpret to mean that unless a provider has been approved to provide care in a way other than what DDAP recommends, providers must be aligned with their guidelines by Jan. 1, 2022. For example, unless a provider has been approved to provide intensive outpatient services at a ratio other than 1:15, that provider must meet the 1:15 guideline. DDAP also said at the meeting that it is working with the MCOs and SCAs to develop a monitoring tool with the goal being development of a collaborative monitoring process so that providers will not need to be monitored for ASAM alignment by multiple payers. Deputy Secretary DiDomenico also said that monitoring of ASAM compliance would focus on ASAM Criteria as explicitly written in the ASAM Criteria 3rd Edition.

Lastly, House Bill 1995, which would have forced DDAP to go through the regulatory review process any time it made changes that affect licensed addiction treatment providers, has stalled in the Senate. After sailing out of the House of Representatives on a timeline that would have enabled it to pass the Senate and land on the governor’s desk before Jan. 1, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee did not take up the bill for vote. With the General Assembly recessed through the end of the year, there is no possibility of HB 1995 providing relief to providers on the confusion around these ASAM guidelines before Jan. 1.

Given the contradictions and confusion, we will share any guidance we get from DDAP as soon as we get it. Please contact RCPA Drug and Alcohol Division Director Jason Snyder with any questions.

The Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs (DDAP) has extended the deadline to apply for provider stabilization grant funding to Friday, December 17. The original deadline was today, December 8. The extension is to provide additional time for all interested providers to gather the required information.

DDAP is making $10 million in grant funding available for stabilization payments to substance use disorder treatment providers in order to assist with pandemic-related expenses. For more information, including how to apply, visit DDAP’s website.

The Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs is making additional funding available to single county authorities (SCAs) for recovery support services. Providers that are contracted with SCAs and interested in providing new or additional certified recovery specialist, certified recovery support specialist, or certified family recovery specialist services should contact their SCAs for more information.

HB 1995, which would require the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs (DDAP) to go through the regulatory review process any time it makes changes that would affect licensed drug and alcohol treatment providers, today passed the House of Representatives and heads to the Senate for concurrence. The next scheduled Senate session days are December 13–15.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Carrie Lewis-DelRosso, specifically outlines the following instances in which DDAP would be required to promulgate regulations:

  • The implementation of new or additional licensing requirements for drug and alcohol facilities;
  • The implementation of new or additional drug and alcohol staff credentialing requirements;
  • The implementation of new or additional drug and alcohol counselor staffing ratios; and
  • The implementation of new or major programmatic changes and requirements imposed on drug and alcohol facilities, including the requirement of adding programs that significantly increase the cost of delivering care and meeting staffing requirements.

The legislation includes any proposed regulatory requirement not currently in effect or any regulatory requirement that the General Assembly has delayed through legislation.

Contact Jason Snyder, Director of Drug and Alcohol Division, with any questions.

The Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs (DDAP), in partnership with Shatterproof, is in the process of implementing the ATLAS (Addiction Treatment Locator, Analysis, and Standards) platform in Pennsylvania over the coming months.

ATLAS is a free, multi-state, web-based platform that will help ensure that Pennsylvanians are able to quickly and easily access addiction treatment resources and information that meets their individual needs. Shatterproof will be contacting providers with instructions for the completion of the Treatment Data Survey. Provider participation in ATLAS is not mandatory. To this point, nearly 40 providers have completed the survey.

The following resources are available to help complete the survey.