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20 21 AT A GLANCE THE AMERICAN ADDICTION TREATMENT ASSOCIATION WHAT: A national trade organization WHERE: Los Angeles, California WEBSITE: www.aata.io THE AMERICAN ADDICTION TREATMENT ASSOCIATION the treatment community.They came together with the goal of clarifying and developing compliance standards for the addiction treatment industry, and,according to Founding Board Chair,HarryNelson,“normalizing it into the rest of the healthcare universe.” “The underlying problem that we sawwasmass confu- sion about howaddiction treatment was supposed to op- erate,”Nelson recounts.“Beginning in 2012,theAffordable CareAct and theMental Health ParityAct had opened up the floodgates of insurance reimbursement to givemuch greater access to addiction treatment,and there had been this incredible growth as a result.Treatment resources and other programs that had been around beforewere expand- ing and newprograms were opening up.But it was like the WildWest.Wewere seeing a lackof standards.” Up until that time,Nelson explains that addiction treatment was not funded the same way as the rest of American healthcare.“Addiction treatment sort of grew up in its own silo,”he says.“Now, it’s been pulled into the healthcare system and folded in ‘behavioral healthcare.’ But there is an enormous amount of work that has to AATA UPCOMING EVENTS APRIL 30 Seminar: Contracting with Physi- cians While Complying with DHCS’ IMS Guidelines: Avoid Costly Mistakes! (Los Angeles, April 30): http://www.aata . io/?page=ims_standards SEPTEMBER 7 Seminar: Risk Reality and Preventa- tive Solutions In The Commercial Payer Landscape (Chicago, September 7): http://www.aata.io/?page=risk_reali- ty_chicag The opioid crisis is terrifying,” he de- clares. “It’s the worst public health crisis America has faced in decades. The death rate is climbing at a scary pace. It’s making overdoses the lead- ing cause of death for people under 50 – worse than guns, worse than car accidents. HARRY NELSON FOUNDING BOARD CHAIR, happen to make that transition a smooth one for the benefit of the patients getting the care they need, for the benefit of the industry being able to survive, and for good operators to be able to sustain their programs and be effective. So, our aim is to take the current fragmented, regulatory landscape and de-mystify it for our members and keep them focused on what matters most: the health and well-being of their clients.” AATA’s membership includes professional addic- tion treatment councilors, addiction treatment mar- keters, psychologists, doctors, attorneys, and social workers.“Our biggest group of members is organiza- tions and residential treatment centers and outpa- tient programs,”Nelson reports.“We have a tier of membership for sober living and other supportive housing environment operators and managers, and we have a tier of membership, started more recently, for lawyers who are working in the space. “Our goal has been to disseminate information that is hard to find on problems that are evolving quickly.And they’re not all the same problems.The people in supportive housing have a lot of issues around land use and fair housing; the issues for facility operators are often around reimbursement; marketing has its own barrel of issues.AATA is the