The Washington Post reports that the Biden Administration is preparing to pull back recent Health and Human Services (HHS) guidance designed to expand access to prescribing buprenorphine for opioid use disorders (OUD).
On January 14, 2021, HHS published Practice Guidelines for the Administration of Buprenorphine for Treating Opioid Use Disorder. In a nutshell the guidelines eliminated certain X-waiver certification requirements, allowing any DEA-registered prescriber to issue buprenorphine prescriptions for medication-assisted treatment of OUDs. The HHS notice does not reference any coordination with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and DEA has yet to publicly comment on this change. Continue Reading Not So Fast: Biden Expected to Halt Expansion of Buprenorphine Prescribing