3:06pm: Hotline with Dave Weekley

U.S. House advances bill written to improve treatment access for drug addicted newborns

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A residential, inpatient drug treatment facility for newborns in Cabell County is the inspiration for legislation the U.S. House of Representatives passed this week as part of a package of bills addressing the opioid addiction epidemic.

3rd District Congressman Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.)

“Our effective, positive, loving experience in West Virginia can be replicated,” said 3rd District Congressman Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.) of the Nurturing and Supporting Healthy Babies Act.

It requires the Government Accountability Office to report on neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), the result of a newborn’s exposure to opiates in the womb.

“The umbilical cord is cut and the exposure to the drugs that were in the mother’s bloodstream ends and we all know what it’s like for an adult to go through withdrawal, but it just breaks your heart when you think that a newborn infant starts their first days (in drug withdrawal),” Jenkins said.

Newborns with NAS require specialized care that can sometimes be five times greater than the costs of treating other babies, according to Jenkins. Much of that care is paid for through Medicaid, either in hospitals or through facilities similar to Lily’s Place in Huntington.

Lily’s Place serves as a transitional space — from hospital to home — for babies born addicted to drugs. In April, the facility admitted its 100th baby since opening in 2014.

“This is just another model of care,” Jenkins said. “This legislation will allow a careful evaluation of this and other models so they can be replicated in other parts of the country.”

The goal of the NAS Act is to improve access to NAS treatment under state Medicaid programs.

With it, it’ll be up to the GAO to identify any federal obstacles by examining the prevalence of NAS, the number of NAS babies covered by Medicaid, NAS treatment types and the costs of such treatment.

The bill was one of more than a dozen pieces of legislation the U.S. House passed this week written to address the opioid epidemic.

Soon after it was introduced in the U.S. House in April, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) introduced a version of the Nurturing and Supporting Healthy Babies Act in the U.S. Senate along with U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine).

Jenkins said the goal was to have it on President Barack Obama’s desk by this summer.

The legislation is a companion bill to the Cradle Act, already introduced, which would direct the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid to establish new guidelines for residential pediatric recovery centers that treat babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome.





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