US regulators are proposing limits on telehealth prescriptions of certain medications to combat the country’s growing opioid crisis.
(Bloomberg) — US regulators are proposing limits on telehealth prescriptions of certain medications to combat the country’s growing opioid crisis.
Patients will be required to attend at least one in-person consultation to obtain prescriptions of controlled medications such as the painkillers Oxycodone and Vicodin, as well as Adderall and Ritalin — used to treat attention deficit disorder, according to new rules proposed by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Rules were eased during the Covid-19 pandemic, effectively allowing doctors to prescribe even the most-addictive drugs to patients they have never met in person. The new proposal marks an effort by the Biden administration to unwind those changes and tackle the opioid crisis, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans over the last two decades.
“DEA is committed to the expansion of telemedicine with guardrails that prevent the online overprescribing of controlled medications that can cause harm,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a statement late Friday.
Read more: Covid-19 Paved the Way for the Opioid Crisis’s Deadliest Phase
Medical practitioners will only be allowed to prescribe a 30-day supply of Buprenorphine — used for the treatment of opioid use disorder — as well as other non-narcotic controlled medications such as Ambien, Valium and Xanax, through telehealth consultations, according to the proposed rules. Patients will then need to attend an in-person consultation to obtain refills.
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