MA Governor Announces Bold Action to Stem Opioid Addiction and Deaths Mass.gov
At the end of March, Governor Patrick directed the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to make Naloxone more widely available and used and prohibit the use of Zohydro, make prescription monitoring systems mandatory, and expand on these in the next 60 days. He also increased funding to addiction treatment services in the state by $20 million...
JUST IN – The FDA has approved
a prescription treatment that can be used by family members or caregivers to treat a person known or suspected to have had an opioid overdose. Evzio (naloxone hydrochloride injection) rapidly delivers a single dose of the drug naloxone via a hand-held auto-injector that can be carried in a pocket or stored in a medicine cabinet.
Patterns of Brain Activation During Craving in Heroin Dependents Journal of Addiction Medicine (free ASAM member resource) Abstinence-based therapy (ABT) and methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) are common methods of treatment in heroin dependence. Heroin avoidance may be achieved by MMT or ABT; however, the neural mechanism underlying these therapeutic methods differs.
Motivation as a Predictor of Drinking Outcomes After Treatment Programs Journal of Addiction Medicine (free ASAM member resource) Patients' motivation to change their substance use is usually viewed as a crucial component of successful treatment. The objective of this study was to examine whether motivation contributes to drinking outcomes after residential treatment for alcohol dependence. The impact of action-oriented motivation at admission to residential treatment is modest but still relevant, compared with other outcome predictors. It may be useful to focus treatment on improving action-oriented motivation to reduce substance use.
Clinical Decision Support for Addiction Your patient’s cognitive and emotional skills play an important part in successful recovery. MyBrainSolutions provides a validated assessment to assess brain health rapidly. Understand your patient’s likelihood of dropping out of the program and relapsing with a specialized brain health report for addiction professionals.
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Health and Health Care for Jail-Involved Population Health Affairs Community Oriented Correctional Health Services (COCHS) worked with Health Affairs to organize and produce a cluster of articles on health and health care for the jail-involved population, with special emphasis on new opportunities created by Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
Consensus Document on Prescribing and Dispensing Controlled Substances Issued – Identify “Red Flags” and Appropriate Actions National Association of Boards of Pharmacy The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy® (NABP®), along with a coalition of health care industry stakeholders including AMA, has issued a consensus statement regarding the collaborative steps that will be taken to help ensure the delivery of responsible and effective patient care as it relates to the prescribing and dispensing of controlled substances. The recommendations identify “red flags” that warrant the need to review the legitimacy of controlled substance prescriptions and how to improve dialogue so that practitioners are supported in delivering the most appropriate patient care.
Medicaid Coverage for Tobacco Cessation Treatments and Barriers to Coverage CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report The fact that most states currently do not provide and promote comprehensive Medicaid cessation coverage is a major missed opportunity to reduce smoking-related morbidity and health-care costs in a population with high smoking rates. Medicaid enrollees have a higher smoking prevalence than the general population (30.1% of adult Medicaid enrollees aged <65 years smoke, compared with 18.1% of U.S. adults of all ages), and smoking-related disease is a major contributor to increasing Medicaid costs. Evidence-based cessation treatments exist...
New York AG Announces Settlement with Parity Violating Health Insurer Office of Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman After an investigation uncovered widespread violations of mental health parity laws, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced in late March a settlement with MVP Health Care, requiring the health insurer to reform its behavioral health claims review process, cover residential treatment and charge the lower primary care co-payment for outpatient visits to most mental health and substance abuse treatment providers.
Pharmacological Interventions for Drug-Using Offenders Cochrane Drugs and Alcohol Group This review focuses on a range of different interventions for drug-using offenders, and considers pharmacological interventions aimed at reducing drug use and/or criminal activity for illicit drug-using offenders.
Barriers to Primary Care Physicians Prescribing Buprenorphine Annals of Family Medicine Despite the efficacy of buprenorphine-naloxone for the treatment of opioid use disorders, few physicians in Washington State use this clinical tool. To address the acute need for this service, a Rural Opioid Addiction Management Project trained 120 Washington physicians in 2010–2011 to use buprenorphine. What was discovered is that targeting physicians in clinics that agree in advance to institute services, coupled with technical assistance after they have completed their training, their clinical teams, and their administrations is likely to help more physicians become active providers of this highly effective outpatient treatment.
Pharmacists' Role in Addressing Opioid Abuse, Addiction, and Diversion Journal of the American Pharmacists Association Implementation of systems and processes that support pharmacist management of opioid-related issues under financially viable business models would create a number of opportunities to improve patient care. Strategies are available that pharmacists can use to reduce the likelihood of opioid misuse, abuse, and diversion...
Ohio: House Passes Bill to Make Prescription Opiate Abuse Part of Schools' Health Curricula Toledo Blade An Ohio bill would require schools to include information in their health curricula about preventing abuse of prescription drugs. Under the proposal, schools would be required to update their health curricula with information about the addictive properties of prescription opioids and their links to heroin.
Risks, Management, and Monitoring of Combination Opioid, Benzodiazepines, and/or Alcohol Use Postgraduate Medicine The concurrent use of opioids, benzodiazepines, and/or alcohol poses a formidable challenge for clinicians who manage chronic pain. While the escalating use of opioid analgesics for the treatment of chronic pain and the concomitant rise in opioid-related abuse and misuse are widely recognized trends...
Fronto-Striatal Dysregulation in Drug Addiction and Pathological Gambling NeuroImage: Clinical Alterations in appetitive processing are central to the major psychological theories of addiction, with differential predictions made by the reward deficiency, incentive salience, and impulsivity hypotheses. Functional MRI has become the chief means of testing these predictions, with experiments reliably highlighting disturbances...
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The views and positions of any content published in ASAM Weekly are not necessarily endorsed by ASAM nor a reflection of ASAM's beliefs and policies. The features are presented as a summary of the contemporary issues being represented and expressed in scientific, governmental, commercial, and media sources across the specialty field of addiction medicine. Contact ASAM Weekly with any comments or feedback.