Federal opioid agonist therapy policy: interrupted time series analysis of the impact of the methadone exemption removal across eight provinces in Canada.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Federal deregulation of opioid agonist therapies are an attractive policy option to improve access to opioid use disorder care and achieve widespread beneficial impacts on growing opioid-related harms. There have been few evaluations of such policy interventions and understanding effects can help policy planning across jurisdictions.

Methods

Using health administrative data from eight of ten Canadian provinces, this study evaluated the impacts of Health Canada's decision in May 2018 to rescind the requirement for Canadian health professionals to obtain an exemption from the Canadian Drugs and Substance Act to prescribe methadone for opioid use disorder. Over the study period of June 2017 to May 2019, we used descriptive statistics to capture overall trends in the

SUBMITTER: Sud A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11302312 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature