Psychiatric News (7/19) reports, “A policy shift early in the pandemic from requiring people with opioid use disorder [OUD] to report daily to clinics for methadone to sending stable patients home with a 28-day supply of the medication did not appear to lead to increased overdose deaths involving methadone relative to overdose deaths involving other substances,” researchers concluded. Instead, “the percentage of overdose deaths involving methadone fell after March 2020, while overdose deaths that did not involve methadone continued to rise.” Investigators arrived at these conclusions after analyzing “monthly drug overdose deaths that took place from January 2019 to August 2021, as recorded in the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System.” The findings were published online July 13 in a research letter in JAMA Psychiatry.
Related Links:
— “Study Points to Benefit of Removing Barriers to Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder, Psychiatric News, July 19, 2022