Increasing Identification and Treatment

Problem drinking is the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States, killing 85,000 Americans annually. It also drains $185 billion from the nation’s economy every year.

Alcohol problems ruin lives. They destroy families, reduce productivity and threaten safety. Yet more than a quarter of a million Americans who seek help for an alcohol problem can’t get it.

Ensuring Solutions is a project of the Center for Integrated Behavioral Health Policy, part of the Department of Health Policy at the School of Public Health and Health Services, The George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC.

Over the past five years, Ensuring Solutions has:  

• Helped businesses nationwide to demand better alcohol-related services from their health plans. Health plans following these new standards increased the identification of patients with alcohol problems by more than 15 percent in one year, ensuring treatment for tens of thousands of additional patients.  

• Convinced the American Medical Association and the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services to create new billing codes that encourage primary care physicians to identify and treat people with substance use disorders.

• Developed new research-based standards for the identification and treatment of substance use disorders. These standards were endorsed by the National Quality Forum in 2007.

• Created an online technical assistance program to help repeal insurance laws that discourage emergency room doctors from identifying patients with alcohol-related problems. Since 2002, this resource has helped to repeal laws in nine states and the District of Columbia.