# The IMPROVE Addiction Care Act: What It Does

This bill aims to help save lives by making sure doctors and Medicaid programs pay closer attention to patients who have overdosed on opioids. Right now, when someone survives an opioid overdose or dies from one, that critical information often doesn't reach the doctors who prescribed them opioids in the first place. This bill changes that by requiring states to set up systems that track overdose victims and alert their prescribers.

Here's what would actually happen under this law: States would have two years to create or update their systems to identify Medicaid patients who've had a nonfatal opioid overdose (looking back anywhere from one to five years) and connect them with addiction treatment and recovery services. If a Medicaid patient dies from an opioid overdose, the state would notify every doctor who prescribed opioids to that person within six months and send them educational materials about safer prescribing practices. Doctors treating Medicaid patients would also get access to information about whether their patients have a history of opioid addiction, overdose, or substance use disorder—information that's currently often hidden from them.

The bill also requires ongoing reviews of prescribing patterns for high-risk patients and mandates that doctors receive education about appropriate prescribing for people with addiction histories. The goal is straightforward: by making overdose information visible to prescribers and connecting survivors to treatment, fewer people will die and more will get the help they need. States that already have systems meeting these standards won't need to create new ones, and all of this is subject to privacy laws that protect patient information.

IMPROVE Addiction Care Act

Trone, David J.

Improving Medicaid Programs' Response to Overdose Victims and Enhancing Addiction Care Act or the IMPROVE Addiction Care Act This bill establishes additional requirements for state Medicaid drug-use review programs with respect to individuals who experience opioid-related overdoses. Specifically, programs must include protocols that (1) connect individuals who have experienced an opioid-related overdose within the last 1 to 5 years (as set by the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services) to appropriate treatment and recovery services; (2) notify providers who prescribe opioids about subsequent fatal overdoses; (3) ensure providers are notified about an individual's history of opioid-use disorder, overdoses, or poisonings; and (4) educate providers about proper prescribing practices for these individuals.