Educational Activities Archives

This Advisory provides comprehensive information for hospitals and associated healthcare facilities on best practices and recommendations for implementing and expanding treatment of opioid use disorder with methadone in these settings.

Over 2.5 million adults in the U.S. are diagnosed with OUD. In 2022, 12.7% of ED visits involved opioids. Yet only 25% of those who need treatment receive recommended MOUD. MOUDs are highly effective treatments that have been shown to decrease opioid use, cravings and transmission of infectious disease, and to increase retention in treatment. As the opioid epidemic continues to impact people across the U.S., the ED represents a critical access point to the health care system, supporting people with OUD by initiating MOUD, such as buprenorphine, and connecting them to low-threshold, easy-to-access care for continued treatment.

Emergency Department Bridge Programs allow ED physicians to connect patients in the ED with comprehensive addiction care. While the benefits of bridge programs for patients with opioid use disorder are known, what’s less understood is how these programs affect the lives of the providers themselves. For a paper published in Academic Emergency Medicine last year, researchers interviewed providers about these programs and found that patients were not the only benefactors.

This session explores the clinical and policy landscape of providing medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) in jails, prisons, and reentry settings. Dr. Arthur Robin Williams and Dr. Peter Treitler review recent research on the effectiveness of MOUD in reducing overdose and improving post-release treatment engagement. The session highlights key differences among methadone, buprenorphine, and extended-release naltrexone, including regulatory and logistical considerations unique to correctional environments. Learners will examine policy updates, case-based examples, and implementation strategies that support evidence-based treatment access. The session also addresses interdisciplinary collaboration, diversion concerns, and continuity of care across incarceration and reentry.

In this module participants review how to identify the main principles of pain treatment in opioid use disorder and to describe how these principles are applied to the treatment of acute pain as well as chronic non-terminal, non-cancer pain in OUD. Specifically, participants will learn to manage opioid withdrawal and acute pain in patients with OUD during hospitalization with and without receiving concomitant MOUD. Participants will examine strategies in formulating a multimodal pain plan for chronic pain in patients with OUD.

This course provides a framework for decision-making around opioid prescribing in individuals with serious illnesses such as cancer who also have a substance use disorder. Clinicians will learn factors to consider, including pain assessment, substance use history, and prognosis, and when buprenorphine might be appropriate to use as a primary medication for pain in the setting of SUD.