§290ee–5 National Recovery Housing Best Practices

Summary

The HHS Secretary must find, help create, and keep updating agreed-upon best practices for running high-quality recovery housing and post them on the SAMHSA website. The Secretary must work with federal and state health officials, Medicaid and insurance leaders, insurers, accrediting groups and recovery housing providers (including Tribal groups), people who have lived with substance use disorder, and others. Those best practices cannot include rules about substance use disorder treatment services. The Secretary must also identify common warning signs of possibly fraudulent recovery housing operators, working with the Attorney General and others. Possible warning signs may include unusual billing, odd average lengths of stay, excessive drug testing costs or frequency, and unusually high rates of people returning to use. The Secretary must share the best practices and fraud signs with state agencies, Tribes and Tribal housing groups, the Attorney General, the Secretaries of Labor and Housing and Urban Development, state and local law enforcement, health insurers, recovery housing groups, and the public, and can give technical help to states. HHS (through the Assistant Secretary) and HUD must lead an interagency working group to coordinate federal actions, avoid duplication, set long-term goals, and improve data on recovery housing quality. The co-chairs are the HHS Assistant Secretary and the HUD Secretary. Members include representatives from CMS, SAMHSA, HRSA, the HHS Office of the Inspector General, the Indian Health Service, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Justice, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Labor, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and any other federal agencies the co-chairs add. The group must meet quarterly and must, not later than 4 years after December 29, 2022, report to the Senate Committees on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; and Finance, and to the House Committees on Energy and Commerce; Ways and Means; Agriculture; and Financial Services. HHS must also give grants to States, political subdivisions, Indian Tribes, and territories for technical help to use the best practices and to promote and keep recovery housing. Within 90 days of getting a grant, and every 2 years after that, each grantee must send HHS and post online a plan for promoting recovery housing and say how the plan follows the best practices. The Secretary may not require States to follow minimum oversight standards. Definitions: "Recovery housing" — shared, alcohol- and drug-free housing focused on peer support and links to recovery services; "Indian Tribe" and "Tribal organization" — meanings given in 25 U.S.C. 5304; "tribally designated housing entity" — meaning given in 25 U.S.C. 4103. To carry out these activities, $5,000,000 is authorized for fiscal years 2023 through 2027.