WSU offers free opioid-treatment training for clinicians

DEA requires special license to administer medication to addicts.

Local doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants can get free training to get licensed to treat opioid addictions with medication.

Treating addiction with buprenorphine — which is also the name brand Suboxone — requires a specific license with the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the training and documentation regulation can be a barrier to some providers.

The training lets the providers apply for the DEA license. The one-and-a-half day training will be Dec. 19 and Dec. 20 at the Boonshoft School of Medicine.

Wright State University’s Boonshoft School of Medicine is administering an $80,000 grant from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to help local providers get the training needed.

“In Ohio, unintentional drug overdoses are the leading cause of accidental death,” stated Dr. S. Bruce Binder, interim chair of the Department of Family Medicine at Boonshoft. “By expanding the number of trained physicians, nurses and physician assistants who can provide medication-assisted treatment of opioid addiction, we can more effectively address the opioid epidemic in southwestern Ohio.”

The eight-hour section of the training is provided by the American Society of Addiction Medicine. The course covers all medications and treatments for opioid use disorder. It meets the requirements needed to obtain the waiver to prescribe buprenorphine in office-based treatment of opioid use disorder.

The four-hour section of the training is provided by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. This section will cover topics on DEA documentation, motivational interviewing, low-dose prescribing, treatment referral and other areas related to medication-assisted treatment.

With unintentional drug overdoses the leading cause of accidental death in Ohio, the grant could help equip local health care providers to respond to the crisis.

Patients in rural parts of the region can have long waits or have to travel long distances to get medication to treat addiction because of the lack of providers with the training.

The grant could help health care professionals around Montgomery and Greene counties, but also the rural counties affiliated with the Wright State University-Lake Campus in Celina. The grant recipients are working with the Wright Rural Health Initiative to recruit trainees.

“Out in the rural areas, there’s almost nobody who is doing it,” Binder had previously said.