Improving Access To Opiate Addiction Treatment, An Answer To Opioid Overdose
Opioid overdose in the United States is continuously taking more lives. The rate of death from drug overdose since 2000 has ballooned 137 percent that accounted a 200 increase in the overdose deaths that involved opioids and heroin.
Almost 2.2 million people in the U.S. suffer opioid addiction. With the shocking statistics, an effective opiate abuse cure is badly needed.
The good news is, recovery is possible with the combination of opiate abuse treatments: counseling, medications and mutual support groups. This is known as the medication-assisted treatment or MAT that is not accessible to people who need it.
More than half of the people who abuse narcotics are not able to receive an opiate addiction treatment because they don't know how to find a facility, or either its too expensive that they could not afford it. Just recently, the Department of Health and Human Services had taken a move to make the access to treatment that includes MAT with buprenorphine, methadone and naltrexone more accessible.
The federal government will make it easier for all people who need a treatment to receive it. One of the suggested move is to improve one barrier in seeking an opiate addiction treatment.
Since doctors have a limit in treating opiate addiction through the use of buprenorphine, the federal government is planning to improve this problem. At present, most doctors who are certified to treat opioid addiction has a limit of 100 patients.
It was seen that the limit in getting a treatment was due to the fact that some patients abuse the medication for nonmedical reasons. Some are selling or giving it to people who don't even need an opiate addiction treatment.
The limit in the access of buprenorphine is designed to restrict the abuse of the medication. Since the buprenorphine prescription limit has been increased in 2002, the rate of diverting buprenorphine has remained constant.
With the improvement in the prescription limit of prescribing buprenorphine, the federal government has succeeded in providing better treatment for opiate abuse. The increase in prescribing limit allowed physicians to provide treatment even to other people who are on the waitlist before the improvement was announced.
The improvement gave qualified doctors the chance to provide better opiate addiction detox to people who need it most. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) allowed prescribing physicians to accept up to 200 patients who are seeking help for their conditions.
The proposed rulemaking includes medication monitoring, behavioral therapy, diversion control plans and care coordination to make sure people will not abuse painkillers or divert them to others. The federal government believes that by doubling the prescribing limit of physicians, they are solving the problem of addiction to opioids and reducing the cases of opioid overdose deaths.