Aim: Facing a steady decline in the enrolling rate at methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) clinics nationwide in Taiwan since 2013, the government initiated the Medical Expenditure Supplements (MES) program to expand the availability of treatment modalities to all contracted MMT clinics in 2019. This study aims to evaluate the impact of MES on the enrolling and retention of patients attending MMT clinics. Methods: We extracted the monthly number of participants and 3-month retention rate via the published statistics from the government and MMT registry. The impact of the MES intervention was evaluated using single interrupted time series analysis by comparing the indexes in the period before (February 2013 to December 2018) with those after (January 2019 to August 2019) the intervention. Based on the number of patients per month, the scale of a MMT clinic was categorized into tiny (1- 50), small (51-100), medium (101-150), and large (151-700) for subsequent stratification analysis. Results: Before the intervention, an obvious participant reduction was observed in every scale of clinics. After the intervention, there was a level elevation in the number of participants, 3.20 for tiny-, 11.12 for small-, and 22.33 for large-scale clinics. In addition, with every passing of a month, there was an additional increase of 0.12 participants for the tiny-scale clinics. The intervention also led to improvement in 3-month retention rate, with a level elevation of 9.28% for the small- and 7.78% for the large-scale clinics. Conclusions: The implementation of MES has not only increased the enrolling but also improve the retention of patients attending the MMT clinics of certain scales, particularly small and large scales. This study help sheds light on how the governmental funding has differential impact on the enrolling and retention of patients MMT clinics of different scales.
Date:
2024-07-01
Relation:
Drug and Alcohol Dependence. 2024 Jul 01;260(Suppl.):Meeting Abstract 110427.
