$26 Billion Oxycontin Settlement Will Fund Drug Treatment Services In 14 States

$26 Billion Oxycontin Settlement Will Fund Drug Treatment Services in 14 States

14 states have agreed to a $26 billion settlement with the pharmaceutical companies responsible for the Opioid Epidemic. This money is intended to support drug treatment services in these participating states.

 

Providers in these states should be on the lookout for new funding as a result of the settlement: North Carolina, Tennessee, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Negotiations were led by the attorneys general of North Carolina and Tennessee, and supported by the other states.

 

The settlement money will be provided by these four companies:

  • the three major pharmaceutical distributors in the U.S. – Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen
  • and a pharmaceutical manufacturer – Johnson & Johnson

 

Under the terms of the settlement:

  • The three distributors will collectively pay up to $21 billion over 18 years;
  • Johnson & Johnson will pay up to $5 billion over nine years with up to $3.7 billion to be paid during the first three years;
  • The total funding distributed will be determined by the overall degree of participation by both litigating and non-litigating state and local governments;
  • The substantial majority of the money is to be spent on opioid treatment and prevention; and
  • Each state’s share of the funding has been determined by agreement among the states using a formula that considers the impact of the opioid crisis on the state – the number of overdose deaths, the number of residents with substance use disorder, and the number of opioids prescribed – and the population of the state.

 

The announcement of the settlement was followed by a 30-day period for state governments to agree to the settlement, which they quickly did. After this followed a 150-day period for city and county-level governments in each state to agree to the terms. By the terms of the settlement, the more local governments in each state that agree, the higher their portion of the settlement will be.

 

The vast majority of local governments in the participating states are expected to opt in. In California, for example, the Attorney General announced last week that the cities and counties representing 97% of his state’s population had agreed to the settlement.

 

The AZZLY® Team supports this new funding for treatment services at the state and community level and consider it a good first step toward supporting more opioid treatment programs and prevention services. We are encouraged to see these 14 states move swiftly to reach agreement on how best to get resources to those individuals that are suffering from substance use disorders. Many state and community level grants are being offered to assist treatment centers to buy modern technology EHR software to serve more and stay compliant. AZZLY addiction treatment software is an all-in-one solution that serves the clinical, practice management and billing needs of residential and outpatient clinics and meets many of these grant guidelines.

 

“The settlement makes available funds and resources to start to address individuals with specific opioid use disorder (OUD) and, more generally, substance use disorder (SUD). Our challenge as a community of professionals is our need to come together to support recovery, and in this environment, those activities need to address healing from and understanding our profound and growing losses,” said Andrea G Barthwell, MD, DFASAM. The former President of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), added, “deaths today are resulting from illicit supplies of fentanyl and heroin, as this problem evolves away from over and mis- prescribing of licit substances to one of illicit supplies. As the problem evolves, so must we and we need the most advanced tools available to help us keep abreast with the changes.”

 

At AZZLY we work with mental health and addiction treatment centers across the country. We empower providers with a specialty-specific Addiction Treatment and Mental Health Electronic Health Record, Patient Management, and Revenue Cycle Management solution. Fill out this form if you would like to see demos of our solution AZZLY Rize™.

 

Reach out any time at hello@azzly.com or 1 (888) 400-3201 if we can answer any questions about AZZLY Rize. Follow AZZLY for more updates on funding for treatment centers.