Methadone prescribing by addiction specialists likely to leave communities without available methadone treatment.

ABSTRACT: Methadone treatment for opioid use disorder is not available in most suburban and rural US communities. We examined 2 options to expand methadone availability: (1) addiction specialty physician or (2) all clinician prescribing. Using 2022 Health Resources and Services Administration data, we used mental health professional shortage areas to indicate the potential of addiction specialty physician prescribing and the location of federally qualified health centers (ie, federally certified primary care clinics) to indicate the potential of all clinician prescribing. We examined how many census tracts without an available opioid treatment program (ie, methadone clinic) are (1) located within a mental health professional shortage area and (2) are also without an available federally qualified hea

SUBMITTER: Joudrey PJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10824529 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature