LIFTING BUPRENORPHINE LIMITS: What will it mean?
It's expected that a congressional bill to raise per-physician limit on number of buprenorphine patients from 30 to 100 will be lifted shortly. The question is: what impact will it have? If anyone has data oin the impact of lifting the (seemingly more important) per-GROUP limit a few years ago, those data have received little if any attention. The need for office-based practitioners to keep records and monitor the number of individuals treated with a particular medication and scrupulously avoid exceeding a legal limit seems likely to continue damping enthusiasm to "get invlved." We'll see - assuming anyone follows and publicizes the experience this time around. One can only applaud anything that offers a glimmer of hope of getting more help to those who want and need it and might benefit from it.
posted by RGNewman, MD @ 10:32 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Do you have any connexion with Lord Rothschild's Drug Dependency website? Your url just v. similar. Re buprenorphine, why should doctors be limited to the # of patients they prescibe to?? When it comes to drugs especially drug addiction treatment so many things bemuse me.
I'm keeping a blog as an addict. I've found hardly anyone blogging who uses (don't ask me why!)
Feel free to drop by: http://gledwood.tripod.com/blog
hello Gledwood - I overlooked your comment and thus the delay - sorries! You're 100% right.Patient limits are not imposed in any other field of medicine - none! - why indeed should they exist when addiction is being treated? It can't be some overwhelming problem with the patients, since no doc is limited to X number of "addicted patients" receiving treatment for asthma, or hypertension, or epilepsy, or HIV/AIDS, or anything else. So . . . it's stigma and stereotyping, and gives a strong message to doctors and the world at large: addiction treatment is something you want to avoid. And we wonder why so few patients find treatment with buprenorphine in office-based practices, and why NIMBY plagues the proposed establishment of methadone providers. THANKS FOR COMMENT - will visit your blog site. rgn
No now come on doctor. It's because they see how doctors are profiting off of methadone and they are putting an x number of paitents per doctor to cut down on the harm doctors are causing by thinking of money before people.
The need to limit caseloads is most benficial to the addicted individual. Anology: Large classroom less individual attention. The process of learnig to use a medication that blocks the urge to use (Opiates)is about education.
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