People can take home doses of their medication for opioid use disorder under federal rules about to become permanent, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Opioid addiction rules people’s lives, yet so does undergoing a lot of treatment for it, including things like having to show up at a clinic daily to get your medicine. Now federal guidelines developed to ease treatment barriers during Covid may become permanent as states decide whether to implement them. Eric Strain, a substance use disorders expert at Johns Hopkins, says this should enable people to enter treatment more easily.

Strain: Another big change is it will be much easier to give take home doses of methadone early in treatment for sustained periods. Now a take home dose of methadone is where the person comes to the clinic on a day, takes their dose under supervision but then gets take home doses to keep in the home to take on subsequent days rather than have to come to the clinic every day. Typically programs will require the person to have a box that has a lock on it that they keep the methadone in.  :31

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.