For area residents trying to kick an opioid or heroin addiction, new federal rules will make it easier to access a medication used to keep drug cravings in check.
That’s good news for those seeking help out of the pit of addiction and for the community at large, which suffers indirectly from the addiction epidemic. The federal Department of Health and Human Services will now allow health care providers to prescribe buprenorphine, known by the brand name Suboxone, to a maximum of 275 patients per provider, nearly tripling the current 100-patient cap.
The cap was put in place to prevent people from diverting the medication for sale on the street, because, while it can help opioid addicts curb their cravings, it can also be abused by others to get high. This news comes as unintentional overdose deaths continue to increase in Massachusetts. The state Department of Public Health this week said that opioid overdose deaths rose in the first six months of 2016 (488 deaths) over the same time period last year. Health officials also noted that the powerful synthetic opioid known as fentanyl continues to be a killer. Out of 439 people who died from January through June this year in the state and for whom a toxicology screen was available, 66 percent had traces of fentanyl in their bodies.
The ubiquity of this menacing substance is one reason why people addicted to opioid drugs can benefit from access to buprenorphine. This medication blocks receptors in the brain normally used by drugs like heroin and thus reduces cravings that drive them to use heroin.
Dr. Ruth Potee, a local addiction expert and physician at Valley Medical Group, prescribes buprenorphine to her patients and described it as one of the “most effective tools in her arsenal” for addressing a patient’s addiction. Half those who use it find it life-saving, she said. Buprenorphine is one of the only medications on which physicians faces prescription limits.
Dr. Kelly Clark, the chief medical officer of Clean Slate, one of the local providers of buprenorphine, said serving more patients will expand life-saving treatment options and reduce black market concerns at the heart of the original limit. This medication is one of the best treatments available for opioid addiction, Clark said, and in the past physicians were handcuffed when limited to prescribing 100. Too often bureaucracies resist common sense solutions — let alone promote them — because they can be averse to change. In this case the national agency that sets rules for drug use did the right thing, which will enable a proven tool against the addiction epidemic to reach more people.