Developing and validating measures of take-home methadone with administrative data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Take-home methadone (THM) flexibility has increased since 2020, representing innovation in opioid use disorder treatment. There are no established approaches to measuring THM using insurance claims data. We proposed and validated candidate measures of THM.

Methods

Using 2020 Medicaid data from 4 states, we constructed treatment episodes for enrollees aged 18-64. Episodes started after July 1, 2020 and lasted at least 60 days. We labelled individuals as receiving THM if they received ≥6 consecutive days of THM in their 2nd month of treatment, as defined by presence of claims with a modifier code indicating THM (the "gold-standard" indicator). We defined 4 candidate indicators of THM based on intervals between in-clinic methadone administrations. We assessed perform

SUBMITTER: Kapadia SN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12755281 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature