DynamiCare Covered in Washington Post for Breaking Federal Barriers to Contingency Management

DynamiCare has just been covered in the Washington Post.

The reason for the national coverage is that we’ve broken through a major barrier for evidence-based addiction treatment in America. For nearly 50 years, contingency management (motivational incentives) has been one of the most evidence-based and effective treatments for addiction (and the most effective one available for stimulant addiction). However, it has remained largely under-utilized. One of the barriers to adoption is the perception that giving financial incentives to patients for staying sober & in-treatment would violate federal regulations against kickback schemes and improper inducements among Medicaid beneficiaries.

The DynamiCare platform includes substantial protective measures (e.g., true random witnessed testing, tracking all incentives, and blocking cash withdrawals), so that it shouldn’t be considered to violate any federal regulations. So DynamiCare partnered with the National Council for Mental Wellbeing to formally ask HHS-OIG (Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General) for an opinion on DynamiCare’s legality. They confirmed that DynamiCare’s model does not run the risk of federal sanctions.

DynamiCare is the only nationally-available contingency management platform to have received this official blessing. That means that any provider, health plan, or state in the country can now implement contingency management — the only solution for the nation’s stimulant epidemic — without any fear of running into trouble with the feds, by using DynamiCare.

“We are trying to eliminate every obstacle, every excuse, every inhibition so that we’re motivating people to go forward with the effort to stay clean. Because it takes a tremendous amount of effort to overcome addiction.”
- David R. Gastfriend MD, Chief Medical Officer, DynamiCare Health