Your primary care physician can prescribe addiction medications, but a new study found 61% of Americans do not know it. Many people with opioid addiction want treatment. But some think only specialists can treat addiction. That keeps some of them from asking their regular doctor for help.
Summary: Many people in the US live with opioid addiction. Studies show most of them want treatment. But poor access to care is still a big barrier. Now a new study shows that 61% of Americans do not know their primary care physician can prescribe addiction medication. The lesson is clear: people need to hear this.
A new study shows that most Americans do not know their primary care physician can prescribe addiction treatment. They think only specialists or special clinics can treat addiction. So they do not ask for help.
We know that most people with substance use disorder (SUD) want treatment. But many hurdles stand in the way. One of the biggest is simple: in many places, care is hard to reach.
In recent years, the government has taken many steps. One step lets primary care physicians prescribe addiction medications.
There was a reason primary care physicians could not prescribe these drugs before. The drugs used to treat opioid use disorder (OUD) are opioids too. But they are much safer than the opioids people with OUD use.
These prescribed drugs help in another way too. They are much safer than street opioids. So there are many reasons to seek OUD treatment. Over time, it may help people beat opioid addiction and stay clean.
But people can only seek treatment if they know that even their primary care physician can prescribe opioid addiction treatment drugs.
The new study ran in a respected journal, JAMA Network Open. It had many surprising findings. It found that 61% of Americans do not know their primary care physician can prescribe drugs for OUD. In fact, about 13% were sure they could not.
Yet the same study found that most people with OUD want treatment. In fact, 82% of people with OUD were willing to seek it. Also, 53% agreed that primary care should provide OUD treatment, and 24% strongly agreed.
The study also found that Black Americans were less likely to know that primary care physicians can treat OUD. That helps explain the gaps in OUD care between groups.
This study matters. The US has fewer than 2500 addiction medicine specialists, and millions of people live with OUD. So primary care physicians can play a big role in treating it. But for that to work, patients must know where to go for help.
This study shows that changing the rules is often not enough. We have to tell the public. We need education campaigns. Primary care physicians must take part in them too, to help close these gaps.
For many people, a primary care physician is the first, or only, regular contact with health care. So these doctors can play a key role. They can spread the word and give their patients lifesaving treatment.
Source: del Pozo, B., Park, J. N., Taylor, B. G., Wakeman, S. E., Ducharme, L., Pollack, H. A., & Rich, J. D. (2024). Knowledge, Attitudes, and Beliefs About Opioid Use Disorder Treatment in Primary Care. JAMA Network Open, 7(6), e2419094. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.19094
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