SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act


SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act, also known as Substance Use–Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act, is a United States federal law, enacted during the 115th United States Congress, to make medical treatment for opioid addiction more widely available while also cracking down on illicit drugs. This piece of legislation is part of the ongoing conflict to stop and prevent the opioid epidemic in the United States. President Trump signed the bill on October 24, 2018.
President Donald Trump called it the “single largest bill to combat the drug crisis in the history of our country.”

Provisions and Short Titles

The provision was originally sponsored by senators Marco Rubio and Amy Klobuchar. EKRA targets patient brokers who recruit patients, shopping them to the provider offering the highest kickbacks.
EKRA is codified at 18 U.S.C. § 220. It generally prohibits anyone from paying, receiving, or soliciting, any remuneration in return for referrals to recovery homes, clinical treatment facilities, or laboratories. In this respect, EKRA operates much like the Anti-Kickback Statute, 42 U.S.C. 1320a-7b, but focused on substance about recovery. Notably, EKRA prohibits paying for any referrals to clinical laboratories whether or not they perform substance abuse testing.
Like the Anti-Kickback Statute, EKRA contains a number of safe-harbor relationships that do not trigger the statute's prohibition.
In January 2020, the Department of Justice announced what is believed to be its first conviction under EKRA. The target of the prosecution was an office manager of a substance abuse treatment clinic in Kentucky, who admitted to soliciting kickbacks from the CEO of a urine drug testing lab in exchange for the clinic’s business.