FRIDAY, Dec. 9, 2022 (HealthDay News) — The number of active buprenorphine prescriptions held steady during the COVID-19 pandemic, with fewer new treatment episodes and fewer episodes ending, according to a study published online Monday. December 6 in the magazine Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Bradley D. Stein, MD, Ph.D., of the RAND Corporation in Pittsburgh, and colleagues examined patterns of buprenorphine episodes during the pandemic using pharmacy claims that account for approximately 92 percent of all prescriptions filled at pharmacies. retailers in the United States. The number of active, initial, and final buprenorphine episodes was examined from March 13 to December 1, 2020, and compared to the expected number of such episodes based on growth from March 13 to December 1, 2019.
The researchers found that in December 2020, the observed number of active buprenorphine episodes was comparable to the expected number, but between March 13 and December 1, 2020, there were 17.2% fewer new treatment episodes than the expected amount based on 2019 experience. Similarly, between March 13 and December 1, 2020, the number of episodes ending was 16.0 percent less than expected. Decreases in expected onsets and expected stops of events were observed throughout the study, but were greatest in the two months after the declaration of a public health emergency.
“While policy efforts may have been successful in keeping existing patients on treatment, that success did not extend to people not already on treatment,” Stein said in a statement. “We don’t know why the number of patients starting treatment dropped so dramatically, although disruptions caused by the pandemic likely contributed to the trend.”
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