Map is from vox.com
In response to the rise of opioid use disorders in this country, lawmakers in heavily affected states are passing laws they hope will help. But well-intentioned laws may have unintended consequences, requiring re-evaluation of those laws.
Nearly one year ago, The Virginia legislature asked the Virginia Board of Medicine to regulate prescribing of buprenorphine. Legislators were worried about the diversion of prescribed monoproduct buprenorphine to the streets. You can read about this in more detail in my blog entry dated February 24, 2017.
It’s been a year since that blog entry, and I have a little bit of data regarding some of the consequences of Virginia’s new rules.
Initially, the new Virginia Board of Medicine (VBOM) regulations said the buprenorphine monoproduct could only be prescribed for pregnant ladies and nursing mothers. They did this because the monoproduct, containing only buprenorphine and no naloxone, has a higher street value and is more likely to be injected and misused than the combination product.
The VBOM received so many complaint letters that they finally changed the regulations to say that each buprenorphine physician could prescribe buprenorphine monoproduct to up to three percent of their patients. Each of these patients must have documentation of their intolerance in their chart.
It was hoped that this compromise would limit the amount of buprenorphine monoproduct being prescribed, while still making allowances for some patents with intolerance to naloxone in the combination product.
The VBOM didn’t stop there. They passed regulations about care at opioid treatment programs (OTPs), which are already the most heavily regulated medical providers in the nation. The VBOM said if buprenorphine monoproduct was used, the patient had to consume it on site, with observed dosing, and that no take home doses could be allowed for the monoproduct.
To clarify, this meant that OTP patients dosing with buprenorphine monoproduct had to either switch to the combination product, buprenorphine/naloxone, to get their usual take homes, or dose daily at the OTP on the monoproduct and forfeit all the take homes they had earned.
Or they could switch to methadone, where take homes are still allowed, following standard guidelines.
This is the irony – methadone is a heavier and stronger opioid than buprenorphine, and more likely to cause overdose death if taken illicitly or diverted. Virginia patients can get methadone take home doses, after they have a period of stability and meet the guidelines which have been in place for decades.
OTPs must follow both state and federal guidelines, and must obey the stricter of the two. The federal guidelines dropped the time in treatment requirement for buprenorphine, meaning the federal agency decided to allow the admitting physician to decide how many take home doses were appropriate, from day one, for a buprenorphine patient.
Essentially, Virginia went the opposite direction, and eliminated take homes, at least for the monoproduct.
At the time the new regulations were implemented, there were 600 Virginia patients on buprenorphine at OTPs. Monoproduct was used because was about half the price of the combination product, and kept treatment more affordable for patients. Also, because OTPs already followed stricter regulations than office-based programs, the risk of diversion was felt to be lower than at office-based programs.
Of those 600 patients, 384 patients attended one of the four OTPs owned by Acadia Healthcare in Virginia. They collected data on what happened to their Virginia patients after these new regulations were implemented. Since I work for Acadia, that data was released to me for an upcoming presentation, but I’ll give my readers an early view.
Of those 384 patients, 260 made the switch to the combination product so that they could continue to get take home doses. In other words, two-thirds of the patients switched, and one-third did not.
The cost of medication doubled, but rather than pass this on to the patients, Acadia Healthcare absorbed all the extra cost. The patients paid the same as if they were getting the cheaper monoproduct. This was fortunate, since an overnight doubling of costs could have caused hundreds of patients to leave treatment.
To some lawmakers, an extra couple of hundred dollars per month might not seem like much. But to many patients, it’s the difference between being able to stay in treatment or having to leave and go back to illicit drug use.
So, what happened to the patients who didn’t make the switch?
- 15 switched to methadone, and will be able to get take home doses once they meet criteria. It’s takes a while, but at least they can get take homes eventually.
- 21 transferred to out-of-state opioid treatment programs because they had an intolerance to the combination product.
- 24 (6%) patients dropped out of treatment.
- 58 remained on the monoproduct and accepted that they will have to dose every single day that they are in treatment. Since all these clinics are in rural areas of Southwestern Virginia, I suspect some of these people are driving long distances daily, and incurring extra expenses for that travel.
- 6 patients were lost to follow up, and couldn’t be contacted to see what happened.
Studies show the risk of death increases as much as eight-fold for patients who leave treatment, so those 24 people are at high risk. I suspect the 6 people who couldn’t be found are also in that risk group.
I have a little bit of data about what’s happened on the receiving end with patients on buprenorphine at Virginia OTPs. One OTP located in Boone, NC, received 12 patients in transfer from Virginia. Those patients could have been OTP patients or office-based patients; I don’t have that data.
I have my own office-based buprenorphine practice in the Lake Normal area of North Carolina, which is 73 miles from the North Carolina-Virginia border. My practice got around twenty phone calls last year, just after Virginia’s law changed. These patients were willing to drive from Virginia to my office if I would prescribe buprenorphine monoproduct. I declined to accept any of those patients, both because it is unworkable in the long run to come from such a distance, and because I was concerned about regulatory scrutiny in my own state.
You can draw your own conclusions based on this limited data. It appears that roughly two-thirds of patients, if forced to switch to the combination product, can do so and remain in treatment.
But remember, costs weren’t increased for those patients enrolled at Acadia OTPs.
That would not have been the case for office-based self-pay patients, who would have paid roughly double each month for their prescriptions for combo products at the pharmacy. Community pharmacies would not have absorbed the extra cost.
I combed the internet, trying to discover data on what happened to office-based patients in Virginia on the monoproduct. If data is out there, I haven’t found it. Or perhaps it’s still being collected and analyzed. I also looked to see if overdose death data changed much in 2017, but it’s likely too early for this.
The American Society of Addiction Medicine has written a public policy statement addressing regulations on office-based buprenorphine policy. This document outlines the most reasonable approach to assure appropriate care for patients while limiting onerous regulations for providers. State legislators would do well to read this policy and abide by its specific recommendations.
I’m tempted to give a summary of ASAM’s statement, but ASAM warns against this, at least without their permission. They don’t want people to use just a section of their policy to justify a position; they want their statement to be read in full.
I think that’s smart of ASAM. I encourage interested readers to check it out.
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