Editor’s Note: This post is about Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT). For an introduction to SBIRT, read this post.
Back in 2013, we conducted a national SBIRT Needs Assessment, the first of its kind. Here’s a summary of its results, presented at the INEBRIA conference in 2015.
The Funding Dries Up
The biggest area of need? Money! As one respondent put it: “SBIRT…fails when funding dries up. The financing model should be rethought.”
Most respondents agreed. The groups we surveyed consistently expressed the need for technical assistance around billing and reimbursement. They also expressed concerns about the sustainability of their SBIRT programs. This was unsurprising since most of our respondents received federal or state funding to develop an SBIRT program.
Because what happens when the grant money’s gone?
An Interactive Map on SBIRT Billing and Reimbursement
A successful SBIRT program has many moving parts, one of which is the ability to bill and receive reimbursement for the services that you offer. With that in mind, we developed an interactive state-by-state map to help you calculate the reimbursement rate for patients with either commercial or public insurance.
Joseph Hurley, who served as the Revenue Cycle Manager at Oregon Health and Sciences University Family Medicine, can attest that there are successful strategies for financing your SBIRT program.
“In Oregon, we’ve been able to be very successful with reimbursement for SBIRT,” he said in a 2013 webinar on this very topic. “If we can do it, so can you.”
Resources
Billing and Financial Worksheets from the Center for Integrated Health Services
