Answer Addiction

Tag: opioid prescriptions

  • How Do The Feds Find Pill Mills?

    How Do The Feds Find Pill Mills?

    Although regulations have clamped down some on over-prescribing, authorities are still finding pill mills in operation.

    Since late last year, federal authorities have charged 87 doctors with operating pill mills where they overprescribed opioids. Data collection has allowed the feds to make those arrests and has helped contribute to guilty pleas from nine of the doctors so far.

    Brian Benczkowski, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, told CNN that while traditional tips are helpful, collecting and analyzing data on prescribing practices allow authorities to work efficiently at targeting the most egregious over-prescribers. 

    He said, “I think before we employed a data driven model it was a lot harder to find them in the first instance. You had to rely on local law enforcement providing tips. You had to rely on individuals in the community providing tips. The data tells us exactly where to go very quickly.”

    How They Locate Pill Mills

    The feds look at a few different pieces of information when analyzing prescription data: they see how far patients are traveling to a doctor, how many deaths are linked to that doctor, and the dosage strength that the doctor provides.

    Federal guidelines recommend that doctors not prescribe opioids that measure more than 90 morphine milligram equivalents, or MMEs, per day. However, doctors operating pill mills prescribe up to 500 MMEs per day to patients. When that is outlined in hard data, it’s easy to know who to investigate, because “usually nothing can justify” writing prescriptions for so many pills, authorities say. 

    Once law enforcement knows where to look, spotting a pill mill is easy. 

    “When you go and observe this doctor’s office and you see lines down the block, you see people shuffling around waiting to go into the doctor’s office, you see behavior that looks very much like behavior you see in traditional street corner hand-to-hand drug distribution, it’s stark. It’s readily apparent what’s going on,” Benczkowski said. 

    How Do Pill Mills Work?

    He explained how the pill mill operations work. 

    “They [the doctors] are taking cash and putting it in their pockets. [Patients] go into the doctor’s office, they leave $300 with the receptionist. They have a two-minute consultation with the doctor who writes them an opioid prescription and they walk out the door. And that line is processed like a conveyor belt all day every day. It doesn’t look like a normal doctor’s office.”

    A Drug Enforcement Administration official said that investigating pill mills is a unique operation. 

    “We’ll do surveillance or send a confidential source in, and we’re really looking at the type of prescriptions doctors are writing and then asking medical experts, are these within the norms? It’s more of a chess game in a way than a traditional narcotics investigation. We’re a cross between investigating white collar crime and narcotics.”

    Although regulations have clamped down on over-prescribing, authorities are still finding pill mills in operation, something that frustrates Father Brian O’Donnell of Catholic Charities West Virginia. 

    “I thought the fear of God had been put into doctors in the past few years,” he said. “I’m very disappointed to hear this is still going on.” 

    Patients Not Targeted in Opioid Prescription Crackdown

    Benczkowski emphasized that the feds are focused on charging the doctors, not people addicted to opioids.

    “We recognize that we can’t just prosecute our way out of this problem,” he said. “The individual patients are not criminal defendants, they’re victims. And we wanted to make sure that they had access to appropriate medical care and appropriate treatment resources.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Delaware Passes Opioid Prescription Tax

    Delaware Passes Opioid Prescription Tax

    New York passed a similar measure earlier this month.

    Lawmakers in Delaware have passed a measure to tax prescription opioids, a move that they expect will generate $8 million over three years to support addiction treatment in the state. 

    Democratic Sen. Stephanie Hansen, who sponsored the bill, said that it will pass on costs to the manufacturers who contributed to the opioid epidemic, according to the Associated Press.  

    “These multi-million dollar companies that have reaped record profits after flooding our doctors’ offices and getting people in pain hooked on these drugs will no longer be able to avoid responsibility for the pain and suffering caused by their products,” she said. 

    However, people who oppose the measure say that manufacturers will pass the costs on to insurance companies, which will then pass them to consumers. Others said that the tax is a misguided and unfair way to address opioid addiction. 

    “Unfortunately, what’s being proposed—taxing legitimately prescribed medicines that patients rely on for legitimate medical needs to raise revenues for the state—ignores evidence-based solutions, sets a dangerous precedent and ultimately won’t help patients and families,” said Nick McGee, a spokesperson for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry group that opposes the measure. 

    The tax rates depend on the dosage, and whether an opioid is a brand name or generic. It ranges from a few cents per pill, to up to a dollar per pill. The bill sets the tax rate of one cent for every morphine milligram equivalent, or MME, a measure of an opioid’s strength. In addition, there is a surcharge for brand-name pills. 

    For example, a 10-milligram pill of oxycodone would be taxed at 4 cents, while OxyContin, the brand-name alternative, would have a 15-cent tax. 

    Johns Hopkins University health economist Jeromie Ballreich said that these amounts would not change what people can expect to pay for their pain medication. 

    He said, “I do not expect copays to change based on this fee, just as they don’t change for drug price increases.”

    Delaware isn’t the only state that hopes to fund treatment through taxing opioids. New York passed a similar measure last week, its second attempt since 2018. Last year the measure was struck down by a federal judge because of the way that it would affect interstate commerce. 

    While New York lawmakers also insisted that patients would not be affected, an academic report on the measure found a different result. 

    “While the language of the proposed law attempts to place the burden of the tax on drug manufacturers, in practice market forces determine how the burden of the tax is shared between producers and consumers,” Lewis Davis, professor of economics at Union College, wrote in the report.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Opioid Prescriptions Drop Drastically In Ohio

    Opioid Prescriptions Drop Drastically In Ohio

    Ohio’s prescription drug monitoring program played a major role in the state’s success. 

    In Ohio, a state that has been ravaged by opioid addiction, the number of opioid prescriptions has decreased by 41% since 2012, according to new data. 

    “We all have a role to play in battling this public health crisis, and this continued downward trend in opioid prescriptions demonstrates that Ohio’s prescribers are making significant progress in their efforts to prevent addiction,” Governor Mike DeWine said in a statement reported by 13 ABC News.

    “When this crisis first emerged, prescribers were led to believe that opioids were not addictive, but we know today that is not the case. It is encouraging to see such substantial progress to limit opioid prescriptions to stop painkiller abuse and diversion.”

    The data was drawn from the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy’s Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System, which monitors prescriptions being written and filled. The reporting system also showed that “doctor shopping” had decreased dramatically in the state—down 89% last year alone. 

    Steven Schierholt, executive director of the Ohio Board of Pharmacy, told the Sandusky Register last year that the prescription reporting system is an important part of monitoring the drug crisis. 

    “In order to fight our way out of this issue, we have to do so with the help of the prescribers,” he said. “There’s too much of a correlation between prescription drugs and illegal drug use to be ignored. Our goal is to provide physicians with the tools to be a part of the solution.”

    The monitoring system was established in 2006, but in 2015 it became mandatory for prescribers to use it. 

    “If you’re a prescriber you can check this system and see what controlled substance prescriptions a patient has been prescribed. That information makes for a better interact[ion] between pharmacy, doctor and patients,” Schierholt said. 

    He added that part of the reason the Ohio prescription drug monitoring program has been so successful is because it is easy to use. 

    “Now if you’re sitting with your physician she [can] see your [prescription] history with a click of button,” he said. “We know a doctor’s time is valuable and want to make it easy to check.”

    However, some data suggests that prescription drug monitoring is no longer an effective way to reduce overdose deaths, since many people have turned to illicit opioids as prescription pills become harder to access. 

    One study found that the opioid epidemic will continue to get worse if policy continues to focus only on prescription drug abuse. 

    “This study demonstrates that initiatives focused on the prescription opioid supply are insufficient to bend the curve of opioid overdose deaths in the short and medium term,” said Dr. Marc Larochelle of the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center in a press release. “We need policy, public health and health care delivery efforts to amplify harm reduction efforts and access to evidence-based treatment.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Doctors Are Cutting Back On Prescribing Opioids

    Doctors Are Cutting Back On Prescribing Opioids

    The number of doctors starting patients on opioid prescriptions also significantly declined.

    While overdose-related deaths from prescription opioids have more than quintupled over the past two decades, some encouraging news regarding the number of new opioid prescriptions written during a portion of that period has surfaced in a new study.

    Time cited research that examined national claims data culled from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which showed that the number of new opioid prescriptions issued per month dropped by 54% between 2012 and 2017—while the number of doctors issuing opioid prescriptions to patients for the first time also declined by a significant number.

    But as the study authors noted, these lower numbers were tempered by the number of physicians who continued to prescribe opioids during this time period, which was often at higher doses and for longer periods of time than the recommended limits suggested for first-time patients by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2016.

    Those guidelines served as the focal point for the study, which was conducted by researchers from Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy and Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Department of Medicine, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    Issued as the opioid epidemic began to reach critical numbers across the country, the CDC urged physicians to either abstain from using opioids as the first course of pain treatment, or to issue three-day supplies of opioid prescriptions at the lowest dose to first-time patients. 

    From there, researchers focused on the monthly incidence of new opioid prescriptions, which they determined was the percentage of Blue Cross Blue Shield members who were receiving an opioid prescription for either the first time ever, or for the first time in the previous six months.

    Their review of the data found that the number of new prescriptions dropped by more than half between 2012 and 2017, while the number of doctors prescribing opioids—either for the first time or to those who hadn’t received a prescription in the previous six months—declined from 114,043 to 80,462.

    “On one hand, we are very much encouraged,” said Nicole Maestas, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the study, to Time. “The study does suggest that every month, fewer people are being started on opioids, which means that the risk of developing opioid addictions and other adverse outcomes is lower because of that. Our enthusiasm is a bit tempered, however. One group of providers didn’t seem to get the message.”

    Maestas was referring to doctors who continued to prescribe opioids after the CDC issued the guidelines. Among that group, they found that 57% were prescribing them to first-time patients for longer than the three-day recommended period, and at higher doses. Of that group, 80% were primary care doctors in private practice.

    The study also raised another area of concern for Maestas and her team—it highlighted the possibility that doctors were not prescribing opioids for patients whose level of pain required such drugs. About 30% of the doctors whose prescriptions were included in the study time period did not prescribe opioids at all to people who had not used them.

    As Time noted, the authors were not able to determine if those patients were given other options for pain management, and suggested that in some cases, pain was under-managed rather than over-prescribed.

    Ultimately, the researchers hope that their findings will help hone future prescription guidelines.

    “It’s good news that some providers are changing their behavior, but not all providers are,” said Maestas. “The data suggests that some could use additional education around this issue.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • FDA May Recommend Naloxone Be Co-Prescribed With Opioids

    FDA May Recommend Naloxone Be Co-Prescribed With Opioids

    The “co-prescribing” recommendation would apply to patients who are at high risk of overdose, including people who take a high-dose opioid.

    The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering recommending that people who receive an opioid prescription are also offered a prescription for naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug. 

    The move is intended to reduce deaths from opioid overdose, but some people say that the effort is misguided. 

    The so-called co-prescribing recommendation would apply to patients who are at high risk of overdose, including people who take a high-dose opioid, have a history of addiction or have sleep apnea, according to CNN.

    Kristy Shepard, a Virginia patient who uses opioids, didn’t know that she had a naloxone prescription waiting for her at the pharmacy. She said that her doctor didn’t give her a heads up about the state’s new co-prescribing recommendations. Other states, including California and Ohio have made similar recommendations, but Shepard doesn’t understand why. 

    “It’s so silly. I didn’t feel like I needed it. Unless I plan to hurt myself, I’m not likely to overdose,” she said. 

    However, Dr. Nathan Schlicher, who is on Washington state’s opioid task force and works as an emergency medicine physician, said this is a common misunderstanding. 

    “You can take pain meds responsibly, and you can be at risk for an accidental overdose even when you’re doing everything right,” he said. Washington also has a co-prescribing recommendation. 

    If the FDA recommends co-prescribing, the need for naloxone would increase by 48 million dosages annually, according to an FDA report. That could be a big financial incentive to drug makers, who have spent money lobbying for similar efforts at the state level, especially in California. 

    Some opponents point out that having naloxone on hand only works if the people taking opioids have someone around who could administer the drug if they overdose. 

    Katie O’Leary, who deals with pain, said that talking about overdose risk and carrying naloxone should be a conversation between individual providers and their patients, not a federal requirement. 

    “So many patients already jump through so many hoops to get their meds,” she said. “And if you live alone and don’t have family or friends to take care of you, the naloxone might not be something that could actually help.” 

    Dr. Farshad Ahadian, medical director at the University of California San Diego Health Center for Pain Medicine, agreed, saying, “Most providers probably feel that it’s better for physicians to self-regulate rather than practice medicine from the seat of the legislature. The truth is there’s been a lot of harm from opioids, a lot of addiction. It’s undeniable that we have to yield to that and to recognize that public safety is critical.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Dentist Wrote 200 Opioid Prescriptions For Five Patients In One Year

    Dentist Wrote 200 Opioid Prescriptions For Five Patients In One Year

    The dentist who wrote the opioid prescriptions claims state investigator were “telling lies” but he did not provide or clarify any additional details.

    A dentist in Tennessee has had his professional license revoked for reportedly writing approximately 200 prescriptions for opioid medications to just five patients, some of whom were never physically present in his office.

    A discipline report from the Tennessee Department of Health revealed that Michael R. Tittle, 64, who maintained a dental practice in the small town of Erwin, Tennessee, allegedly lacked the proper records to justify writing the prescriptions, which in one case totaled 71 prescriptions for 10 hydrocodone pills over the course of just six months.

    In a statement to the Tennessean, Tittle claimed that state investigators were “telling lies,” but he did not provide or clarify any additional details.

    In addition to the revocation of his license, Tittle was also assessed a civil penalty of $13,000, plus court costs not to exceed $3,000. These details, as well as the allegations against Dr. Tittle, were made public on November 15 as part of a monthly discipline report by the state Department of Health, which maintains public records on doctors and other health care professionals throughout the state. 

    According to the report, Tittle’s office came under investigation after the Department of Health received a complaint about his prescribing practices while on a five-year probation for multiple infection control violations. After reviewing his Controlled Substance Monitoring Database report, the Department requested 13 dental records; these were found to lack “a concise description and justification for the amount and frequency of controlled substances,” according to the report. 

    Prescription records for five patients were also highlighted in the report; in addition to the aforementioned patient, one patient is reported to have received 49 prescriptions for hydrocodone and 14 prescriptions for oxycodone, totaling 630 tablets, between October 2016 and September 2017.

    Another patient reportedly received 24 prescriptions, totaling 210 tablets, for more than a year after undergoing a root canal, while a third received two prescriptions for oxycodone and two for hydrocodone, all totaling 110 tablets, between August and November 2015, despite the fact that no documentation could confirm that the patient had ever set foot in Tittle’s office.

    The report also noted that Tittle admitted to having a pre-signed, blank prescription slip in his office that had been “copied onto security paper to generate additional pre-signed prescription slips.”

    To settle the case, Tittle agreed to the revocation of his Tennessee dental license as well as $1,000 in civil penalties for each of the 13 records reviewed by the Department of Health and the “actual and reasonable costs” of prosecuting the case. The findings were also reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Doctor Stands By Writing More Than 300k Opioid Prescriptions

    Doctor Stands By Writing More Than 300k Opioid Prescriptions

    “I was never charged or ever investigated because I didn’t commit any crimes. I prescribed narcotics to people in pain.”

    When Dr. Katherine Hoover was working at a pain clinic in West Virginia between 2002 and 2010, she wrote more than 335,130 prescriptions for painkillers, which breaks down to 130 prescriptions each day, seven days per week. 

    Despite the outrageous numbers, Hoover recently told NBC News that she stands by her actions and she didn’t do anything wrong. 

    “I was never charged or ever investigated because I didn’t commit any crimes,” Hoover said in a telephone interview. “I prescribed narcotics to people in pain. I did everything I could to help people have a better life, which I told the FBI. Every prescription I wrote was justified for the person who had gotten it.”

    Despite the fact that she practiced in the state with the highest rates of opioid overdose deaths, Hoover sees no connection between her actions and the crisis. 

    “That’s not because of doctors,” Hoover said. “It’s actually gotten worse since they forced doctors out of business who do their best to treat pain patients. … The first and real problem in our country is the high rate of suicide and the distress people are in. That’s the epidemic that we need to start looking at.”

    Hoover began working at Mountain Medical Care Center, a private clinic in Williamson, West Virginia that was reportedly known for easily giving out prescriptions.

    Each morning, cash patients would line up outside the clinic, where first-time patients paid $450 to see a doctor, and returning patients paid $150 to the receptionist to write a refill for their prescriptions. In 2009 alone the clinic took in more than $4.6 million in cash, according to court documents. 

    “They called it ‘Pilliamson,’ instead of Williamson,” Mingo County Prosecuting Attorney Michael Sparks told The Charleston Gazette in 2011. “It was an open secret, you might say.” 

    In 2010, federal authorities shut down the clinic. The office manager and another doctor who worked at the clinic were charged with crimes including selling narcotics prescriptions, but Hoover was never charged. She received a civil penalty of about $90,000 and reportedly fled to the Bahamas.

    Over the past eight years, according to NBC, Hoover has been reportedly elusive with her whereabouts, although she is still engaging in lawsuits, including with a dry dock company that she says wrecked her yacht. 

    Speaking with NBC, Hoover said that her doing time in jail would not solve anything. 

    “We need to stop putting people in jail,” she said. “Our jails are full of innocent people. This needs to be addressed as a public health problem. Everybody in our society is addicted to something.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Overdose Deaths Increase in New Jersey Even As Prescriptions Decline

    Overdose Deaths Increase in New Jersey Even As Prescriptions Decline

    State attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal says that despite the fatal OD increase “there are reasons for hope.”

    Opioid overdose deaths in New Jersey increased by 24% last year, even as the number of prescriptions written for opioids fell for the first time in recent years. 

    According to a press release from the state attorney general’s office, just over half of opioid overdose deaths in the state were caused by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids meant to mimic its strength. 

    “We still lose too many of our residents to drug overdoses, and the death toll continues to rise,” said Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal. “But, if we look at the numbers, there are reasons for hope.”

    Despite the fact that an average of eight New Jersey residents die from an opioid overdose each day, Grewal said that policies to limit prescriptions of opioids are working. The state’s opioid prescription rate peaked in 2015, when 5.64 million opioid prescriptions were dispensed.

    By 2017, that number was down to 4.87 million, making last year the first “in recent memory when the number of opioid prescriptions fell below 5 million,” said the press release. 

    In March 2017, the state enacted a five-day limit on first-time opioid prescriptions. Since then, prescriptions of opioids have decreased 26%.

    Between January 2014 and March 2017 they were reduced just 18%, so this suggests a significant improvement in cutting back on opioid prescriptions. Overall, opioid prescriptions have been reduced by 39% between January 2014 and July of this year.

    “The decreasing rate of prescription opioids dispensed in New Jersey shows that a smart approach to the opioid epidemic can help turn the tide. If we persist in our efforts to prevent addiction and overdoses, we can save lives,” said Sharon Joyce, director of the Office of the New Jersey Coordinator for Addiction Responses and Enforcement Strategies (NJ CARES).

    In order to try and decrease the opioid overdose rate, the state will begin offering more information online, including data on naloxone administration rates and overdose rates for specific counties. 

    “The Attorney General is not only making his Department’s opioids data publicly available,” the press release said. “Through NJ CARES, the Department is relying on data to target its education efforts and identify its enforcement priorities.”

    The administration is also focusing on outreach efforts, including an ad campaign to highlight a safe disposal program for unused prescriptions.

    And the musical Anytown will be performing at middle and high schools across the state to raise awareness about the dangers of opioids. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Underlying Social Issues May Be Fueling The Opioid Epidemic

    Underlying Social Issues May Be Fueling The Opioid Epidemic

    “If we solve the [opioid] sub-epidemic, will there be another sub-epidemic that comes on its heels?” asks one expert.

    A new study has affirmed that there are underlying social issues when it comes to the opioid epidemic.

    The study, published Thursday (Sept. 20) in the journal Science, determined that drug overdose deaths have been increasing since 1979, well before opioid abuse began climbing in the 1990s. 

    According to researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, this could mean that rising overdose deaths are actually connected to “larger societal problems like alienated communities and an increasingly disaffected population.”

    During the study, researchers examined data from about 600,000 deaths categorized as drug overdoses from the National Vital Statistics System. In doing so, they discovered that the overdose deaths “followed an almost perfectly exponential trajectory” from 1979 to 2016.

    Researchers found that the overdose deaths doubled about every nine years, and that by 2016 it had increased to one death every eight minutes.

    “This smooth, exponential growth pattern caught us by surprise,” Dr. Donald S. Burke, senior author and dean of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, told ABC News. “It can be hard to grasp what exponential growth really means, but you can think of it as a nuclear explosion: you start with 2 [deaths due to drug overdose], then 4, then 8, then 16, and so on.”

    Though the increase in overdose deaths was consistent, researchers did not find that there was any similar predictability when determining deaths from a specific drug.

    By utilizing a method called heat-mapping, researchers were able to plot overdose patterns across the country and found that while certain drugs were more prominent in certain areas, nearly every region showed an overdose “hotspot” for at least one drug.

    In doing so, the researchers came to the conclusion that overdose deaths have continued to increase even though the use of individual drugs has fluctuated over time.

    “It implies that there are other forces at work, besides the specific drugs,” Burke told ABC News. “The forces are broader and deeper than we thought, including social determinants of health and technological determinants of health.”

    Burke further explains, “The drugs have become cheaper over the years and their delivery systems have become more efficient… These factors increase drug availability. People are losing a sense of purpose in their lives and there has been dissolution of communities, making people more susceptible to using drugs—increasing demand.”

    While Burke agrees that treatment programs and availability of the overdose antidote naloxone are helpful for individuals, he worries that not enough is being done to address the underlying issues. 

    “If we solve the [opioid] sub-epidemic, will there be another sub-epidemic that comes on its heels?” Burke said. “If we don’t address the social determinants of health that underlie drug use and addiction, there’s a good possibility that the drug overdoses will start to emerge again.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Doctors Gave No Reason For Writing Opioid Scripts In Nearly 30% Of Cases

    Doctors Gave No Reason For Writing Opioid Scripts In Nearly 30% Of Cases

    A new study uncovered that doctors were prescribing opioids for hypertension and high cholesterol when no pain diagnosis was recorded. 

    A team at Harvard Medical School and the Rand Corp. combed through medical records from 2006 to 2015 and found that physicians gave no explanation for writing an opioid prescription in 29% of the cases.

    According to NBC News, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been working to get doctors to pull back on opioid prescriptions, citing careless prescribing as one cause of the opioid crisis. In 2016, more than 42,000 people died of opioid overdose, according to the CDC.

    The new study was led by Nicole Maestas, professor of health care policy at Harvard. Maestas and study coauthors went through tens of thousands of medical records, and then honed in on more than 31,000 physician surveys that included an opioid prescription.

    In two-thirds of the prescriptions, some type of pain diagnosis was present.

    The report, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, then concluded, “No pain diagnosis was recorded at the remaining 28.5%.”

    “At visits with no pain diagnosis recorded, the most common diagnoses were hypertension, hyperlipidemia (high cholesterol), opioid dependence and ‘other follow-up examination,’” the research revealed.

    This over-prescribing could be unfairly impacting people who do have serious pain conditions and are finding it difficult to access the opioids they need to manage their pain due to new restrictions and doctors who fear that they will be targeted for over-prescribing.

    Dr. Tisamarie Sherry, who worked on the study, was reported in NBC News as emphasizing, “Whatever the reasons, lack of robust documentation undermines our efforts to understand physician prescribing patterns and curtails our ability to stem overprescribing.”

    The study also showed that 24% of youth who appeared with an opioid use disorder did not have a prescription to a medication-assisted treatment (MAT) drug to control their cravings.

    Drugs like buprenorphine and methadone are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of opioid use disorder.

    “In this multistate study of addiction treatment and retention in care, we found that three-quarters of youths diagnosed with opioid use disorder received treatment within three months,” researchers wrote in JAMA Pediatrics. “However, most treatment included behavioral health services only, and fewer than one of four youths received timely buprenorphine, naltrexone or methadone treatment.”

    View the original article at thefix.com