The Biden administration will lift barriers to healthcare providers treating opioid use disorder with buprenorphine, a drug shown to reduce the risk of overdose and death, amid the worsening drug abuse crisis.
“This policy empowers physicians but also as nurse practitioners, nurse specialists, nurse anesthetists, and others to use the best science available to treat their patients with opioid use disorder,” said Regina LaBelle, acting head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
The updated policy aims to widen the availability of buprenorphine as part of medication-assisted treatment for opioid dependence by authorizing a wider range of outpatient providers to administer the drug to up to 30 patients at a time. Physician assistants, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, certified registered nurse anesthetists, and certified nurse midwives who are authorized to prescribe other medications will be exempt from the certification requirements related to training and counseling known as the “X-waiver.”
RURAL AREAS BEHIND IN THE FIGHT AGAINST OPIOIDS
The Trump administration repealed the X-waiver just days before President Joe Biden took office. However, the Biden administration overturned the repeal, arguing that former President Donald Trump neglected to get necessary clearance from Congress and the White House Office of Management and Budget. Biden campaigned on the promise that he would widen the availability of medication-assisted treatments.
“We don’t have visibility into how the Trump administration … process that they used,” LaBelle said. “We certainly worked very closely with [the Department of Health and Human Services] legal counsel, the White House policy council … to look at this from top to bottom to make sure that it was in line with what our administrative authorities are.”
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Widening the pool of authorized prescribers will be a lifeline to rural and remote areas where affordable treatment for substance use disorders is scarce. Fatal overdoses due to opioids amounted to about 90,000 in the 12 months leading up to September 2020, the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in that time period, reflecting the increased rate of drug abuse during the coronavirus pandemic.
