Expanding Treatment Opportunities for Hospitalized Patients with Opioid Use Disorders

The United States is facing an epidemic of prescription opioid and heroin use, which has been linked to the escalating prescribing of opioid analgesics. Though opioid prescriptions appear to be reaching a plateau, estimates suggest there are at least 900,000 active heroin users in the United States, and this number continues to grow.¹ One response to this epidemic (through state legislation and medical society guidelines) has been a move to reduce opioid prescribing in order to diminish the potential for diversion and misuse.² However, the treatment of pain is not the sole driver of heroin epidemiology, and new strategies are also needed to better engage patients with existing opioid use disorders (OUDs) to begin treatment. These patients are increasingly hospitalized for infectious comorbidities of injection drug use, trauma, or pregnancy, and this may present a unique opportunity to initiate these patients on maintenance opioid agonist therapy, the most effective option for medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for addiction.

Patients with OUDs comprise an estimated 2% to 4% of hospitalized patients, representing a disproportionately large number of inpatients.^3-6 According to a recent analysis of data from the National (Nationwide) Inpatient Sample, the estimated annual number of hospitalizations associated with OUDs in the United States increased from approximately 300,000 to more than 500,000 in the decade from 2002 to 2012.⁷ Severe bacterial infections associated with intravenous administration of opioids (including endocarditis, osteomyelitis, septic arthritis, and epidural abscess) increased substantially at an estimated cost of more than $700 million in 2012.⁷ Over a similar period, the prevalence of opioid use among women in labor increased from 13.7 to 22.0 per 10,000 live births,⁸ and there was a corresponding rise in admissions to neonatal intensive care units for neonatal abstinence syndrome.⁹ As the prevalence of prescription drug and heroin dependence continues to rise across the United States, hospitals and clinicians find themselves on the front lines of this epidemic, creating potential opportunities to engage patients in recovery, a “treatable moment” for this vulnerable population.¹⁰

Currently, a common approach in the hospitalized patient is to attempt medically assisted withdrawal using a rapid taper of long-acting opioids. This process may appeal to healthcare providers who hope to guide their patients in transitioning to opioid abstinence. However, tapering an opioid regimen, even over a period of months, results in unacceptably high rates of relapse (as high as 70% to 90% in some studies), especially when a patient is acutely ill and symptomatic from a concurrent medical issue.^11-13 In the hospital setting, this treatment failure can manifest as pain and undertreated withdrawal symptoms (such as agitation, arthralgias, and gastrointestinal distress), which may hinder some patients from completing their treatment or drive some to leave against medical advice.¹⁴ Further harm may occur when an inpatient rapid taper is accomplished, putting patients at increased risk of a fatal relapse after discharge due to loss of tolerance.¹⁵Maintenance opioid agonist therapy with buprenorphine or methadone, in which a long-acting opioid is titrated until craving and withdrawal symptoms are well controlled, is the first-line modality for MAT among patients with OUDs in outpatient settings and is associated with reduced risk of fatal overdose and all-cause mortality.¹⁶ Initiation and dose stabilization of agonist therapy with these agents during acute medical hospitalization has been shown to be feasible in a variety of inpatient settings.^17-20 In one trial, patients randomized to buprenorphine induction and linkage to office-based therapy during their inpatient stay were more than 5 times as likely to enter and remain in treatment after discharge when compared with those in whom buprenorphine was tapered.²⁰ International guidelines support the use of maintenance agonist therapy in this context, but this remains an underutilized strategy in recent efforts to treat OUDs in the United States.^21,22 A few key barriers currently prevent this strategy from being applied broadly within our healthcare system.

First, there is a common misconception that regulations prohibit the use of methadone and buprenorphine for opioid agonist therapy by inpatient medical providers without special certification. Title 42 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) provides extensive guidance regarding the use of opioid medications by registered outpatient opioid treatment programs. However, it also contains an exemption from these rules for hospitals treating patients with emergent medical needs (21 CFR § 1306.07[c]) allowing hospital-based clinicians “to maintain or detoxify a person as an incidental adjunct to medical or surgical treatment of conditions other than addiction” without restriction. According to guidelines from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, this exemption applies to the use of both methadone and buprenorphine.²³