SBIRT Services Provide Effective Screening for Alcohol & Drug Abuse May 1, 2015 By offering a simple but effective screening for alcohol or drug abuse during an office visit, providers can help patients get the care and information they need to stay healthy. If risky drinking or drug use is detected, a brief intervention, and in some cases referral, helps the patient recover more quickly and avoid serious health problem. The SBIRT measure, or Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment, measures the percentage of patients (ages 12 and older) who had appropriate screening and intervention for alcohol or other substance abuse. SBIRT services is a quality metric being monitored by the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) for coordinated care organizations for 2015. Follow our reimbursement guidelines SBIRT services are reimbursed for all of our plans by Samaritan Health Plan Operations (SHPO). However, SHPO only reimburses SBIRT services when a complete abuse structured screening, specific to alcohol and drug abuse, such as the Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST) or Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) has been conducted. SHPO does not reimburse SBIRT services for the intervention only, also known as the three screening questions. SHPO follows national billing standards in reimbursing CPT codes for SBIRT services billed. This means that only certain services can be billed with or without certain E/M codes and with or without certain modifiers. Please reference the Reimbursement Guidelines for more information.
