Health
AMA opposes buprenorphine limits
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted July 10, 2006
Restrictions on the number of opioid-dependent patients one physician may treat with buprenorphine should be lifted, stated policy adopted at the American Medical Association Annual Meeting in Chicago last month.
The drug buprenorphine was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in October 2002, but practices were limited to treating 30 patients on this drug at any one time. According to surveys by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, this rule has been one of the major impediments to using the treatment more widely. The practice limitation was scrapped last August, and legislation is now in the U.S. Senate that would eliminate this restriction for individual physicians.
"There's an enormous population out there that cannot obtain treatment," said Stuart Gitlow, MD, MPH, the delegate from the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
"I find it rather amazing that doctors can prescribe thousands of patients simultaneously something like OxyContin, but, then I try to treat those patients with something like buprenorphine, I can only treat 30 of them."
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2006/07/10/hlbf0710.htm.
