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In honor of American Pharmacists Month this October, we want to highlight the essential role healthcare professionals play in managing opioid use disorder (OUD). OUD presents significant challenges, especially when treating patients with concurrent pain. This complexity arises from the delicate...
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Elimination of X-Waiver and Training Requirements for New MATE ACT
As a healthcare provider, you've probably heard about the Medication Access and Training Expansion (MATE) Act but may be unclear about precisely what it means for you. This comprehensive overview can help you better understand it...
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Can psilocybin—a hallucinogenic chemical obtained from mushrooms—improve mental health in struggling Veterans? Arizona’s legislature may grant $30 million to help researchers find solutions via controlled trials. By studying whole mushrooms and their 100s of compounds, vs the synthetic, 1 molecule...
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While the disease of addiction knows no boundaries, unfortunately treatment for opioid use disorder seems to. In yet another example of healthcare inequity, Black and Latin patients have less access than Whites to buprenorphine. Why? That’s what researchers at the University of Washington hope to...
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The journal of Anesthesiology featured a special article in which a new concept is presented: a prescription opioid ecosystem. The need for this ecosystem stems from the “opioid paradox” that, even though the past 10 years has seen a drop in opioid prescribing of about 38%, deaths from opioids have...
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In an effort to address the healthcare needs of military personnel with traumatic brain injury (TBI), the College of Nursing at the Florida Atlantic University has initiated the M.O.M. project. Mind Over Matter aims to help those with this “invisible wound of war”: TBI affects about 30% of those in...
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In a study presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY annual meeting, the concerns of postsurgery opioid use, and the groups most at risk, were highlighted. For patients using opioids for the first time for pain management after surgery, certain groups—people who smoke, those who suffer from depression, and...
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JAMA reports a noted increase in opioid use disorder treatments in those enrolled in Medicaid. The study looked at over a million enrollees from 11 states: medication treatment prevalence in 2014 was 47.8% and in 2018, 57.1%. Of note, use of OUD medication was higher in pregnant women and white...
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How much of a problem is doctor shopping? “Doctor shopping” is defined as ≥1 day of getting overlapping prescriptions for opioids from ≥2 prescribers and going to ≥3 pharmacies to have them filled. A recent article published in the Journal of Pain Research looked at patients with chronic noncancer...
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The Non-Opioids Prevent Addiction in the Nation (NOPAIN) Act was recently introduced into the House of Representatives, after working its way through the senate. Its goal? To make it easier to access non-opioid pain management treatments. The Act hopes to “address payment disincentives for...