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 got to be good news, for those seeking help out of the pit of addiction and for the community at large, which suffers indirectly from the current 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 originally 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.
Buprenorphine blocks receptors in the brain normally used by drugs like heroin, and thus reduce the 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.
“It’s not a magic bullet that fixes everyone, but for about half the people who use it, it is life-saving,” Potee said. “The number one thing people say to me is that they feel normal again, they can go to school and things line up again. They’re able to allow their brain to heal. Many are weaned off of it eventually.”
Potee noted buprenorphine is one of the only medications that have a limit on how many people a doctor can provide it to.
“We prescribe a lot of dangerous drugs in our practice, so it seems silly to limit a drug that has such a low danger risk,” she said.
Dr. Kelly Clark, the chief medical officer of Clean Slate, one of the local providers of buprenorphine, said serving more patients will simultaneously expand life-saving treatment options and reduce the black market concerns at the heart of the original limit.
This medication is one of the best treatments we have for opioid addiction, and in the past physicians were really handcuffed since they could only prescribe for 100, Clark said.
The new 275-patient limit is higher than Pote and many of her colleagues expected.
Too often bureaucracies resist common sense solutions — let alone promote them — because they can be averse to change. So, we are happy to see that in this case the national agency that sets rules for drug use did the right thing, which will improve our chances of beating back the current addiction epidemic.