Collaborative Video Consultations from Tertiary Care Based Telepsychiatrist to a Remote Primary Care Doctor to Manage Opioid Substitution Therapy Clinic

Opioid use is a major problem in India and has high morbidity and mortality with a prevalence of 2.06%. There is a huge treatment gap for opioid use disorders (OUDs). Due to limited mental health resources and limited psychiatric training of medical practitioners in OUDs, a significant proportion of patients do not receive appropriate medical intervention. This article demonstrates how a primary care doctor working in a remote opioid substitution therapy (OST) clinic received assistance from the optional opioid module of clinical schedule for primary care psychiatry (CSP) and collaborative video consultation (CVC) module to address specific difficulties of patients already on Buprenorphine OST and improve the quality of care, thereby reducing chances of relapses. CVC module is a part of one-year digitally driven primary care psychiatry program designed by National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru. The opioid module was designed by NIMHANS, Bengaluru in collaboration with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi These observations warrant replication of this approach across diverse settings and at a larger scale to explore and evaluate its impact and effectiveness.