325 - Keeping Patients and Communities Safer and Healthier by Securing Medications for Opioid Use Disorder

Session Description: Diversion of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) can contribute to adverse outcomes including initiation, relapse, overdose, accidental poisoning, and death. That’s why patients, prescribers and pharmacists involved in MOUD programs have identified medication security as a key concern.
Some MOUD patients live with vulnerable family members, including children. Others live in congregate care settings with non-family members who are in recovery themselves. The potential consequences of drug diversion are very serious in either case.

This session will show how a partnership between a community health center serving underserved populations and a rural county health department with access to grant funding is proactively addressing this critical community healthcare and safety issue. Topics will include medication security as a risk for patients in recovery; the program approach and effectiveness of dispensing medications such as suboxone films and buprenorphine tablets in locking prescription vials, along with patient counseling and follow-up; and data and qualitative feedback from MOUD patients, prescribers, and pharmacists on the first phase of the pilot program.

Participants also will learn how rural health care providers and local governments can collaborate with treatment centers and pharmacies on experimental interventions; and how states and localities are responding to this issue.