CareFirst to use American Society of Addiction Medicine Guidelines

As part of the 2019 Maryland legislative session, Governor Hogan signed House Bill 599/SB 631 into law on April 30, 2019 requiring that, effective January 1, 2020, all health plans must use the most recent edition of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) guidelines for all substance use disorder cases. This law will be applied across all of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield and CareFirst BlueChoice, Inc. (CareFirst’s) service area.

As part of this mandate, CareFirst has updated policy 2.01.074 Urine Drug Testing in Pain Management Substance Abuse Treatment on the provider website. To see this update, along with all of our medical policies, visit carefirst.com/medicalpolicy. For questions about this update, please contact Dr. Robert Ciaverelli at Robert.Ciaverelli@carefirst.com or 443-738-3208