Abstract
This column provides an overview of the relationships between alcohol and other drug (AOD) use and traumatic injury, and illustrates new ways of thinking about the need for routine screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) in hospital emergency departments and trauma centers. It describes the unintended consequences of insurance exclusion laws (sometimes known as alcohol exclusion or intoxication exclusion laws) imbedded in the Uniform Accident and Sickness Policy Provision (UPPL) of many states, which allow insurance companies to deny reimbursement to hospitals that treat individuals that are impaired by alcohol or drugs at the time of injury, and demonstrates how insurance exclusion laws serve as barriers to the widespread adoption and utilization of SBIRT services