July 20, 2022

Yesterday I attended a national meeting that featured a presentation from Dr. David Gastfriend and Dr. T. Westley Clark entitled, “Implementing Contingency Management.“

The National Council has been assisting Dr. Gastfriend, who is an Addiction Medicine Doctor, and a business he operates called DynamiCare Health, that has developed an app based model for implementing Contingency Management.

Providers of SUD services have been reluctant to implement Contingency Management (CM) which is an evidence-based model for treating substance use disorders using financial incentives to reward healthy behavior and abstinence, for a variety of reasons including the fear of running afoul of the Office of the Inspector General and other federal regulatory bodies due to anti-kick back and other regulatory concerns.

The National Council has been assisting DynamiCare as the company works to correct some of the misperceptions associated with CM, and in doing so, increase the confidence of providers that may wish to implement this strategy.  In March 2022, the OIG released an Advisory Opinion that may quiet some of these concerns. And in April of this year, ONDCP discussed the merits of the use of motivational incentives through smart phone applications and smart debit card technology, in its’ National Drug Control Strategy document.    I have linked the Power Point presentation offered by Drs. Clark and Gastfriend, for your review and consideration.