Grant will expand local training of health professionals in MAT

Thanks to a $3 million grant, the resources offered by the Providers’ Clinical Support System for Medication Assisted Treatment (PCSS-MAT) are about to get a more local touch. The American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP) and a coalition of national professional organizations were awarded a three-year, $3 million grant by the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) to expand the PCSS-MAT initiative.

Over the past three years, PCSS-MAT has developed a program of training modules, webinars and clinical mentoring for training on treatments for opioid use disorders. The training, much of which is web-based, has been used by physicians, nurses, dentists, social workers, firefighters and EMTs. With this $3 million grant, the program be expanded to offer more in-person options at the local level, AAAP Executive Director Kathryn Cates-Wessel tells Addiction Professional.

AAAP’s partnerships will include more primary care organizations and will include a “MAT Implementation Program” in which four community health centers in urban and rural underserved regions will receive multidisciplinary training.

“We will identify states or regions and bring a multidisciplinary clinical team to talk about their barriers to the use of medication-assisted treatment, local reimbursement regulatory issues, what’s happening in the clinic,” Cates-Wessel says. “We will help advise through mentoring in their setting, not just on the phone or through email. It will be deeper and more personal.”

The grant will also cover the costs of providing the training that is required for prescribing buprenorphine free of charge, Cates-Wessel says.

The PCSS-MAT coalition of addiction and primary care healthcare professional organizations now includes the following eight institutions: the AAAP, the American College of Physicians, the American Psychiatric Association, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA), the American Osteopathic Academy of Addiction Medicine and the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.