Editorial Policy

Purpose

CCIWA publishes information about opioid use disorder treatment in the United States. The audience is patients, families, clinicians, and policy researchers. Decisions made on this site can influence whether someone calls a clinic. We treat that as a medical-adjacent responsibility, not a marketing one.

Sourcing rules

• Federal sources are preferred over state aggregators when both exist.
• Primary sources are preferred over secondary summaries.
• Every numeric claim cites the source and vintage.
• When two sources disagree, we publish the federal source and note the disagreement.
• We do not republish data from a competitor directory without independent re-verification.

Clinic listing rules

• Methadone clinics: must appear on the active CMS Medicare Provider OTP file.
• Buprenorphine providers: must have an active NPPES enumeration with a delivering address and a phone number.
• No clinic is listed without a working phone number.
• No clinic is listed without a deliverable address.
• Closed, suspended, or unverifiable listings are removed at the next refresh.

AI disclosure

AI assists with structure, drafting, and code. Every published claim is grounded in a cited source. AI is not the source of value on these pages. The methodology, source selection, scoring formulas, and editorial framing are decided by humans. AI output that cannot be backed by a citation does not get published.

Conflict of interest

CCIWA does not accept payment from clinics or operators for placement, ordering, star rating, or visibility. The site does generate revenue when calls placed through our verified intake line connect to a partner intake counselor, and that partner relationship is disclosed on every clinic page. Editorial decisions about which clinics to list and how to score states are made independent of any partner relationship.

Medical review

Pages making clinical claims are reviewed by a credentialed clinician. The named reviewer is listed on the medical review board page. We are transparent that the launch reviewer slot is filled by a placeholder while the V2 review board is finalized. Pages that contain clinical decision content carry a visible date of last review.

Corrections

We treat data corrections as the highest priority editorial task. To request a correction, email the address on the contact page with the URL and the correction. Verified corrections are applied within seven days and logged on the methodology changelog.

Plagiarism and content reuse

We do not copy content from other sites. We do not use spun or paraphrased versions of another publisher's text. Quotes from primary sources are clearly attributed.

Update frequency

• CMS OTP list: quarterly
• NPPES: monthly
• State coverage tables: when KFF or CMS publishes a refresh, or when a state law changes
• State Access Scores: whenever any input dataset is refreshed