Health Care Utilization After Paraprofessional-administered Substance Use Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral...

Authorities recommend universal substance use screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) for all (ie, universal) adult primary care patients.

The objective of this study was to examine long-term (24-mo) changes in health care utilization and costs associated with receipt of universal substance use SBIRT implemented by paraprofessionals in primary care settings.

This study used a difference-in-differences design and Medicaid administrative data to assess changes in health care use among Medicaid beneficiaries receiving SBIRT. The difference-in-differences estimates were used in a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate potential cost-offsets associated with SBIRT.

The treatment patients were Medicaid beneficiaries who completed a 4-question substance use screen as part of an SBIRT demonstration program between 2006 and 2011. Comparison Medicaid patients were randomly selected from matched clinics in Wisconsin.

The study includes 4 health care utilization measures: outpatient days; inpatient length of stay; inpatient admissions; and emergency department admissions. Each outcome was assigned a unit cost based on mean Wisconsin Medicaid fee-for-service reimbursement amounts.

We found an annual increase of 1.68 outpatient days (P=0.027) and a nonsignificant annual decrease in inpatient days of 0.67 days (P=0.087) associated with SBIRT. The estimates indicate that the cost of a universal SBIRT program could be offset by reductions in inpatient utilization with an annual net cost savings of $782 per patient.

Paraprofessional-delivered universal SBIRT is likely to yield health care cost savings and is a cost-effective mechanism for integrating behavioral health services in primary care settings.