In 2017, 47,600 Americans died from opioid-related overdoses. These deaths were attributable largely to fentanyl and heroin, which were involved in 28,400 and 15,482 deaths, respectively.1
The standard of care for opioid use disorder (OUD) requires practitioners to offer medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when medically appropriate.2 The FDA has approved three medications for the treatment of OUD: buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone.3
The federal government has prioritized increasing the number of practitioners who provide office-based opioid treatment (OBOT) using FDA-approved medications.4 Practitioners authorized to prescribe buprenorphine for OUD have cited the following reasons, among others, for their reluctance to provide OBOT:
- Inadequate training to support confidence in prescribing;
- Burdensome regulatory requirements; and
- Increasing regulatory and law enforcement scrutiny of practitioners who do provide such treatment.5
