Only 1 in 4 addicted to opioids takes life-saving meds. Why? - Harvard Gazette

""A lot of our research, including that for this grant, is looking at why so few people are getting evidence-based treatments for substance use disorder," said Huskamp, Henry J. Kaiser Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. "Medications for opioid use disorder are highly efficacious. They reduce opioid use; they reduce overdose risk and other negative outcomes. These medications save lives.""

""A shortage of clinicians specialized in treating opioid use disorders - particularly in rural areas - presents a major barrier to receiving care, she said. "Our work has been trying to understand, since the pandemic in particular, who was using telemedicine for opioid use disorder," said Huskamp, "and whether the availability of care, via telemedicine, has meant that clinicians who treat substance use disorders are now seeing more patients in areas where there aren't enough doctors who do this work.""

From 1999 to 2023 approximately 806,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses while an estimated 2.4 million U.S. adults have opioid use disorder, yet only one in four receives medications that reduce overdose risk. Telehealth has shown promise to expand access to medications such as methadone and buprenorphine, especially where clinicians specialized in opioid treatment are scarce in rural areas. A federally funded study launched last year to examine telehealth use and impact was terminated amid mass grant cancellations, halting research into whether telemedicine increased treatment availability since the pandemic. Medications for opioid use disorder are highly efficacious and save lives.

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