Protection or Harm? Suppressing Substance-Use Data

The CMS policy of withholding from research data sets any claim with a substance-use–disorder diagnosis or related procedure code impedes research evaluating policies and practices meant to improve care for patients with such disorders. What if it were impossible to closely study a disease affecting 1 in 11 Americans over 11 years of age — a disease that's associated with more than 60,000 deaths in the United States each year, that tears families apart, and that costs society hundreds of billions of dollars? 1 What if the affected population included vulnerable and underserved patients and those more likely than most Americans to have costly and deadly communicable diseases, including HIV–AIDS? What if we could not thoroughly evaluate policies designed to reduce costs or improve care for such patients? These questions are not rhetorical. In an . . .