Study Sheds New Light on Arkansas’s Medical Marijuana Program

A study by researchers with ACHI and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences offers new insight into Arkansas’s medical marijuana program, examining issues such as the conditions for which people are qualified for medical marijuana use, evidence for those conditions in medical claims data, and patients’ relationships with their certifying physicians.

The study, published by Health Affairs, is a first-of-its kind examination of the extent to which medical marijuana has been integrated into a state’s health care system.

According to the study, 860 physicians, or 12.5% of those actively licensed in Arkansas, certified at least one patient for medical marijuana in 2021. Most of those 860 physicians had cared previously for the people they certified, and a majority certified between one and nine patients during that year. However, seven physicians certified 1,000 or more people each, accounting for 34% of the nearly 77,000 Arkansans certified for medical marijuana in 2021. The researchers also found that fewer than 10% of the people certified by the seven high-volume physicians had traditional clinical visits with those physicians in the 12 months before they received certification.

Other findings include:

• Of the 18 qualifying conditions for medical marijuana certifications, the five most common were post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, 41.9%; intractable pain, 39.8%, severe arthritis, 14.7%, peripheral neuropathy, 7.2%; and fibromyalgia, 6.1%.
• Cancer and intractable pain were the qualifying conditions most commonly associated with a traditional clinical visit with the certifying physician in the year before certification.
• PTSD was the condition with the least evidence of care coordination. Only 32.2% of Arkansans certified for medical marijuana based on PTSD had evidence of any medical insurance claims related to a PTSD diagnosis, only 21.5% had evidence of a traditional clinical visit with their certifying physician, and only 14.2% had both.

Funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health (Grant No. R01DA054312).