Physician-pharmacist collaboration may increase adherence to opioid addiction treatment according to a new study published this week in Addiction. The research team consists of 3 Duke GIM Faculty members, first author, Dr. Li-Tzy Wu, and co-authors Drs. Lynn Bowlby and Larry Greenblatt.
The investigators studied the transfer of care of 71 participants using buprenorphine maintenance therapy for opioid use disorder from waivered physicians to trained community pharmacists and found nearly 89% of participants remained in the study and 95.3% adhered to the daily medication regimen. During this 6-month trial, no opioid-related emergencies or hospitalizations were reported. The proportion of opioid-positive urine drug screens was less than 5% at month 6 among participants who completed all urine drug screens in the study.
"We are so fortunate to have a great investigative team working on this multi-site study," says Wu. "The study findings have important implications for further research on physician-pharmacist collaborative models to expand treatment for individuals with opioid use disorder."
View the full article here: Buprenorphine physician-pharmacist collaboration in the management of patients with opioid use disorder: results from a multisite study of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network