Few physicians in the U.S. have taken the training needed to prescribe medication for opioid addiction. Advocates are seeking to change that. For most of their medical care, 169,000 residents of Kenosha County, Wis., don’t have to go far. There…

Continue Reading Opioid-Addiction Treatment Is Limited by Shortage of Authorized Doctors

Substantial increases in opioid-related morbidity and mortality have motivated the implementation of federal policies to expand the buprenorphine prescribing capacity of primary care providers and other clinicians. Using a national prescription database that covered 72–92 percent of the US population during…

Continue Reading Buprenorphine Treatment By Primary Care Providers, Psychiatrists, Addiction Specialists, And Others

The nation has seen it before: During previous economic downturns, more people died from opioid overdoses, but fewer people entered treatment for heroin addictions. “There’s likely much more use of substances that we’re not capturing right now, either in hospitals or emergency rooms…

Continue Reading A Collision of Epidemics: Coronavirus Disrupts Addiction Treatment

Instead of in-person check-ins, Arlene Brown says, counselors connect with their clients over the phone. “Now more than ever, it’s important to have more communication with that patient,” she said. While in the past, Brown may have each week connected…

Continue Reading Getting Off Drugs Takes a Community. But How Do You Do That in a Pandemic?

All of the conditions that frequently lead to drug abuse are present: isolation, anxiety, job loss. Now the question is, how will we address it? As May comes to a close, COVID-19 had killed nearly 100,000 Americans so far this year. This…

Continue Reading The Coronavirus And Efforts To Fight It Could Be Fueling Opioid Deaths

The May 2020 issue of Health Affairs journal includes the article, “Self-Help Groups And Medication Use In Opioid Addiction Treatment: A National Analysis,” by Hefei Wen and colleagues. In response to world events, the editors of Health Affairs asked the authors to…

Continue Reading COVID-19 Pandemic Provides Opportunity To Realign Self-Help Groups With Medications For People With Opioid Use Disorder

The stress of social isolation is especially challenging for people battling an addiction to opioids — an estimated 2 million of them in the U.S. Health care providers worry that the pressure of lockdown, in many cases combined with loss…

Continue Reading Another View: The Response To Covid-19 Will Help To Defeat Opioid Abuse

Opioid overdose patients with private insurance are rarely connected to addiction treatment after visiting the emergency department, a new national study from the University of Pennsylvania has found. And the problem is particularly severe among black and Hispanic patients, more…

Continue Reading Even With Private Insurance, Black Overdose Patients Are Half As Likely As Whites To Get Addiction Treatment, Penn Study Finds

Correction: MedMark Treatment Centers Amherst, which opened May 20, claimed to be the first methadone clinic in Lorain County, and facility Director Michelle Richardson said the next-closest facility was in Cleveland. Several resource sites that connect patients with addiction care…

Continue Reading New Methadone Clinic Opens in Amherst