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Telemedicine increases access to buprenorphine initiation during the COVID-19 pandemic

Federal regulatory changes during the COVID-19 pandemic allow buprenorphine to be prescribed without an initial in-person evaluation. Prior to COVID-19, numerous barriers limited broad uptake of buprenorphine among people who use drugs at the system, provider, and patient levels, including lack of a...

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Autores principales: Wang, Linda, Weiss, Jeffrey, Ryan, Elizabeth Bogel, Waldman, Justine, Rubin, Stacey, Griffin, Judy L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7833481/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33771276
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2020.108272
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author Wang, Linda
Weiss, Jeffrey
Ryan, Elizabeth Bogel
Waldman, Justine
Rubin, Stacey
Griffin, Judy L.
author_facet Wang, Linda
Weiss, Jeffrey
Ryan, Elizabeth Bogel
Waldman, Justine
Rubin, Stacey
Griffin, Judy L.
author_sort Wang, Linda
collection PubMed
description Federal regulatory changes during the COVID-19 pandemic allow buprenorphine to be prescribed without an initial in-person evaluation. Prior to COVID-19, numerous barriers limited broad uptake of buprenorphine among people who use drugs at the system, provider, and patient levels, including lack of available DATA 2000 waivered clinicians to prescribe, stigma, and competing livelihood priorities. As two harm reduction primary care programs in New York State that care for people who use drugs and offer buprenorphine, one rural (Ithaca) and one urban (Manhattan), we have rapidly adopted telemedicine to initiate buprenorphine treatment. Our collective experience suggests that telemedicine for buprenorphine initiation is eliminating many traditional barriers to treatment, in particular for individuals leaving incarceration, and people who use drugs and access syringe service programs. Future models of buprenorphine treatment should incorporate telemedicine for buprenorphine initiation, which can be done in collaboration with community-based outreach and peer networks to engage people who use drugs. This regulatory change must be sustained beyond COVID-19, and is vital to increasing access to buprenorphine, closing the opioid use disorder treatment gap, and achieving greater health equity for people who use drugs.
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spelling pubmed-78334812021-01-26 Telemedicine increases access to buprenorphine initiation during the COVID-19 pandemic Wang, Linda Weiss, Jeffrey Ryan, Elizabeth Bogel Waldman, Justine Rubin, Stacey Griffin, Judy L. J Subst Abuse Treat Article Federal regulatory changes during the COVID-19 pandemic allow buprenorphine to be prescribed without an initial in-person evaluation. Prior to COVID-19, numerous barriers limited broad uptake of buprenorphine among people who use drugs at the system, provider, and patient levels, including lack of available DATA 2000 waivered clinicians to prescribe, stigma, and competing livelihood priorities. As two harm reduction primary care programs in New York State that care for people who use drugs and offer buprenorphine, one rural (Ithaca) and one urban (Manhattan), we have rapidly adopted telemedicine to initiate buprenorphine treatment. Our collective experience suggests that telemedicine for buprenorphine initiation is eliminating many traditional barriers to treatment, in particular for individuals leaving incarceration, and people who use drugs and access syringe service programs. Future models of buprenorphine treatment should incorporate telemedicine for buprenorphine initiation, which can be done in collaboration with community-based outreach and peer networks to engage people who use drugs. This regulatory change must be sustained beyond COVID-19, and is vital to increasing access to buprenorphine, closing the opioid use disorder treatment gap, and achieving greater health equity for people who use drugs. Elsevier Inc. 2021-05 2021-01-15 /pmc/articles/PMC7833481/ /pubmed/33771276 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2020.108272 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Wang, Linda
Weiss, Jeffrey
Ryan, Elizabeth Bogel
Waldman, Justine
Rubin, Stacey
Griffin, Judy L.
Telemedicine increases access to buprenorphine initiation during the COVID-19 pandemic
title Telemedicine increases access to buprenorphine initiation during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full Telemedicine increases access to buprenorphine initiation during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_fullStr Telemedicine increases access to buprenorphine initiation during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Telemedicine increases access to buprenorphine initiation during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_short Telemedicine increases access to buprenorphine initiation during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_sort telemedicine increases access to buprenorphine initiation during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7833481/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33771276
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2020.108272
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