Physician Capacity to Provide Buprenorphine-Assisted Treatment for Opioid Overuse

Buprenorphine is effective in treating patients with opioid use disorders, but it can be prescribed only by addiction specialists or physicians who complete a special course and receive a waiver from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Waivered physicians are restricted to treating no more than 30 patients at a time during the first year, so as to prevent inappropriate scheduling of a controlled substance; after that, they can request that their limit be increased to as many as 275 patients. To assess whether physician capacity is adequate to treat patients with buprenorphine, researchers used a national claims database to examine buprenorphine prescribing patterns between 2010 and 2013 in the seven states with the most buprenorphine-waive…