Evaluating buprenorphine prescribing and opioid-related health outcomes following the expansion the buprenorphine waiver program.

ABSTRACT:

Aims

To evaluate associations between new types of buprenorphine waivers (nurse practitioner and physician assistant [NP/PA]; 275-patient limit [MD/DO-275]) and both buprenorphine prescribing and health outcomes.

Methods

Using comprehensive county-level data from California 2010-2018, we modeled quarterly associations between numbers of NP/PA and MD/DO-275 waivers and rates of buprenorphine prescribing, opioid-related deaths, emergency department (ED) visits, and hospitalizations among all counties and separately among metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties using Poisson regression models with county and quarter fixed effects and adjusting for time-varying covariates.

Results

Each additional NP/PA and MD/DO-275 waiver was associated with a 2.6% (95%CI: 1.1-4.1%) an

SUBMITTER: Rowe CL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10023135 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature