Substance use research at Washington State University helped spur a recent change in Washington state policy to provide Medicaid coverage for contingency management, a behavioral treatment that uses gift cards and small prizes to help motivate people to quit using drugs.
WSU researchers, who have been conducting studies that show contingency management’s effectiveness for decades, have spent the past two years providing training and coaching to a small number of Washington state clinics implementing the intervention to treat stimulant drug addiction as part of a pilot project sponsored by the state Health Care Authority. Their work helped convince the state to include contingency management in its Section 1115 Medicaid waiver. With the recent approval of that waiver, Washington state is now the second state in the nation after California to provide Medicaid coverage for contingency management.