“My decisions to revoke take home doses provoke more anger and outrage from my patients than anything else I do. This is a sensitive issue, and it feels like I’ve had to make more of these difficult decisions recently. I get it – revoking take home doses is a terrible inconvenience for patients, and expensive as well, what with the extra drive time to the opioid treatment program. And yet, there’s no denying that patients can develop problems and start misusing their take homes, or even start diverting them for sale.
To understand patients’ fury at losing take home doses, I need to describe how hard it is to get those take homes in the first place. Patients don’t waltz into treatment and get take home doses right away.
For patients on methadone at opioid treatment programs, (OTPs), eight criteria must be met before the patient can get any take home doses.”
Read more at: https://janaburson.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/revoking-methadone-take-home-doses-2/
Source: Dr. Jana Burson, MD – February 21, 2016
