In areas of the country disproportionately affected by the opioid crisis, treatment programs are less likely to accept patients paying through insurance of any type or accept pregnant women, a new Vanderbilt study found.
While the opioid crisis has escalated across the U.S., there has been growing concern that treatment capacity has not kept pace. In 2016, more than 42,000 Americans died of an opioid-related overdose, more than any year on record. Opioid agonist therapies, like buprenorphine and methadone, have been shown to reduce risk of overdose death, and for pregnant women with opioid use disorder this benefit extends to the baby—making it more likely the infant will be born at term and with higher birthweights.
Vanderbilt researchers focused on four Appalachian states—Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina and West Virginia—that have among the highest rates of opioid use in the country and are more affected by opioid overdose deaths. In their study published in the journal Substance Abuse, researchers found that only about 50 percent of opioid treatment providers took any insurance, and there was also a huge variance among the states in programs that accepted Medicaid.
[For more on this study by Vanderbilt University Medical Center, go to https://medicalxpress.com/news...ltiple-barriers.html]
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