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Telehealth Supports Retention in Treatment for OUD
Using telehealth when starting buprenorphine treatment for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) supports the likelihood of staying in treatment longer as compared to starting treatment in a non-telehealth setting, according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open https://jamnetwork.com.
The report analyzes Medicaid data from 2019-2020 in Kentucky and Ohio, adds a growing body of evidence demonstrating positive outcomes associated with the use of telemedicine for treatment of OUD.
The research was conducted as part of the HEALing Communities Study, the largest addiction prevention and treatment implementation study ever conducted, supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) https://nida.nih.gov and carried out in partnership with SAMSHA through NIH's https://www.nih.gov "Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative," or referred to as the NIH HEAL Initiative.
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Prior to 2020, people with OUD were required to meet in person with a healthcare provider to start treatment with buprenorphine. After the onset of the pandemic, the U.S government implemented prescribing flexibilities to facilitate buprenorphine access for patients with OUD.
Also, the updated policies allowed clinicians to remotely prescribe buprenorphine to new patients via telehealth without conducting in-person exams, expanded payments for telehealth services, and provided flexibility to deliver clinical care for people with substance use disorders (SUD) via telehealth.
Researchers then looked at a smaller subset of data from individuals who started treatment with buprenorphine in either the second or third quarter of 2020 which included 9,172 people in Kentucky and 12,328 people in Ohio. In both states, starting treatment via telemedicine was associated with the higher likelihood of staying on treatment for 90 days.
The authors of the study also noted that additional research is still needed to continue to examine the impact of telehealth on patient outcomes, beyond the Medicaid populations in Kentucky and Ohio, and beyond the year 2020.