PHARMA PHARMA? –
Feb. 10, 2022 – In April 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) took steps to lower some barriers for doctors (and nurse practitioners and physician assistants) to prescribing buprenorphine. Buprenorphine, a partial opiate agonist, has been shown to reduce mortality and illicit opioid use in patients with opioid use disorder. Before this, only about 6 percent of active physicians in the U.S. held the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA’s) “X-waiver,” permitting them to prescribe buprenorphine. Why not provide this education and training to every new doctor before they graduate from medical school? Recent data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics indicates an estimated 100,306 overdose deaths in the U.S. during the 12 months ending in April 2021, a 28.5 percent increase from the previous year. Deaths from opioids increased nearly 35 percent to almost 76,000 Americans during the same period.
