MATE Act announcement and resources

On December 29, 2022, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 enacted a new one-time eight-hour training requirement for DEA-registered practitioners on the treatment and management of patients with opioid or other substance use disorders, effective with any renewal or initiation of DEA registration on or after June 27, 2023. 

There is good news about meeting this new requirement (which will simply be an attestation check box on the DEA registration site): Past trainings on the treatment and management of patients with opioid or other substance use disorders can count towards this requirement, and there is no past training time limit.  For example, if you have been renewing your medical license in Tennessee, each two-hours of CME on this topic opioid you have completed for that renewal also counts toward this required training, as does any CME-accredited activity on this topic.  Thus, we believe that the majority of you will not need to complete a full 8 hours of training prior to renewing or initiating your DEA registration. 

Additionally, if you have graduated in good standing from a medical (allopathic or osteopathic), dental, physician assistant, or advanced practice nursing school in the United States within five years of June 27, 2023, and successfully completed a comprehensive curriculum that included at least eight hours of training on treating and managing patients with opioid or other substance use disorders, you are considered to have met the requirement; also if you are board-certified in addiction medicine or addiction psychiatry, you too are considered to have met the requirement.

If you do not believe that you can attest to having completed 8 hours of training on the treatment and management of patients with opioid or other substance use disorders, then VUMC offers numerous options for you to complete additional training to reach the eight-hour threshold.  The table below lists the courses, number of hours of credit, and means by which you can complete the course:

If you select a QuizTime option from the table above, you will receive one question per day on Monday – Friday. The QuizTime courses equivalent to 4.0 hours of training take 4 weeks to complete, and the QuizTime courses equivalent to 2.0 hours of training take 2 weeks to complete. Multiple QuizTime courses can be taken concurrently. Other available QuizTime Opioid Education courses can be found at: https://catalog.quiztimehealth.com/catalog/tennessee-state-opioid-education.

These are the options currently available at VUMC; for additional options for meeting the requirement, please reference the MATE_Training_Letter_Final.pdf (usdoj.gov) and/or Recommendations for Curricular Elements in Substance Use Disorders Training | SAMHSA.

We hope you find this information helpful.  I believe that most of you already will have met some, most, or even all of the required 8 hours of training, but you need to be comfortable attesting to this fact when you renew or initiate your DEA registration on or after June 27, 2023.