Barriers to opioid addiction treatment drug lifted

The Biden administration is easing decades-old requirements that made it difficult for doctors to treat opioid addiction using medication.

New guidelines announced Tuesday mean doctors and other health workers will no longer need extra hours of training to prescribe buprenorphine, a gold standard medicine that helps with cravings. And they no longer have to refer patients to counseling services.

Prescribers will be able to treat up to 30 patients at a time with the drug. It comes in a pill or film that dissolves under the tongue. It costs about $100 a month. A common version of buprenorphine is Suboxone.

Because of how opioids act on the brain, people dependent on them get sick if they stop using. Withdrawal can feel like a bad flu with cramping, sweating, anxiety and sleeplessness. Cravings for the drug can be so intense that relapse is common.

Buprenorphine helps by moving a patient from powerful painkillers or an illicit opioid like heroin to a regular dose of a legal opioid-based medication.

Besides doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, certified nurse midwives and some other types of nurses will be able to prescribe buprenorphine without first getting special training.

The Trump administration tried to make a similar change in its final days but it would have applied only to doctors.

The Biden administration put the matter on hold for a legal and policy review, ultimately deciding to expand the easier guidelines to more prescribers.

“What it does is provide more onramps to treatment,” said Brendan Saloner, an addiction researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “This will help in health centers, hospitals, jails and prisons — places where these folks sometimes show up for treatment.”

“What it does is provide more on-ramps to treatment.”

BRENDAN SALONER, ADDICTION RESEARCHER