For years, most physicians needed to get an additional eight hours of training and a special allowance to prescribe the medication.
The Trump administration in its final weeks had nixed the extra training requirements. The Biden administration however rescinded the changes and said the new guidelines were made prematurely and needed examined further.
The Dayton Daily News previously reported that while some physicians have advocated for this regulatory easing, some other doctors have said that the training is needed because providers otherwise might not feel comfortable or educated on how to manage the treatment.
Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, joined local elected officials, law enforcement, health care leaders, and opioid addiction experts at a roundtable at addiction treatment center OneFifteen to discuss the impact of the opioid crisis on the Dayton community, as well as his legislative action.
Turner recently introduced two pieces of his legislation, the Medicaid Reentry Act, which let incarcerated people enroll in Medicaid 30 days before release, and the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act, which would once again remove the training requirements for Suboxone prescribing.
Turner said the changes would give physicians flexibility in how they treat their patients.
“This is such an important issue because it affects some of the people that we love the most in our community, our families or friends,” Turner said.
Speaking to the other bill that would allow enrollment in Medicaid 30 days before leaving jail, Montgomery County Sheriff Rob Streck said at any given time about 20% of inmates in the jail are on detox protocols for opiate addiction.
“But being able to get a service provider that has a history with this individual into the jail to get everything in a row before they get out, we see as a very large advantage to the community, to that individual and to the Montgomery County jail to reduce recidivism, and help the inmate when they get out with as much confidence knowing that people support them,” Streck said.
Other participants at the roundtable included Dr. Natalie Lester, medical director at OneFifteen, Dr. Nancy Pook, with Kettering Health Network, Beth Esposito, president of Samaritan Behavioral Health, executive director of Family of Addicts Anita Kitchen, Helen Jones-Kelley, director Montgomery County ADAMHS Board and Montgomery County Commissioner Judy Dodge.
In Montgomery County, in 2017, 566 people died from accidental overdoses, mostly fueled by opiates. So far, preliminary data indicates 320 people in the county died from accidental overdoses in 2020, compared to 285 deaths in 2019. For 2021, 65 people have died so far from accidental overdoses according to preliminary data.
Addiction treatment with the help of one of three medications -- buprenorphine, methadone or naltrexone -- is known as medication-assisted therapy.
While medication-assisted therapy access improves the odds of sustained recovery, access is limited. Only about 42% of Ohio rehabilitation facilities offer buprenorphine and only 55% offer any form of medication-assisted treatment.
Particularly, patients in rural parts of the region can have long waits or have to travel long distances to get medication to treat addiction because of the lack of providers with the training. The latest federal data listed no providers in Preble County who had received the training to prescribe buprenorphine.
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