United States: A new study indicates that telemedicine could be a better approach to encourage opioid addicts to come for treatment and attend all the required sessions.
Patients who were referred to an addiction treatment clinic after their telemedicine check-up came to their first appointment more often than those who got a referral after an ER visit, the authors wrote in the Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment, as reported by HealthDay.
Increased Retention Rates
Participants who received telemedicine referrals for addiction also had a higher rate of program retention of at least a month.
“Our study shows that patients referred from telemedicine are more likely to follow up initially and still be retained in care at 30 days,” said Dr. Joshua Lynch, a lead researcher who is an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Buffalo, New York.
Sustained treatment and maintenance of addiction depend on outpatient follow-up and iterative consumption of treatment substances such as buprenorphine or methadone, researchers found.
Emergency Room vs. Telemedicine
“Opioid-use patients usually come to a hospital emergency department when they are in crisis mode,” said Dr. Brian Clemency, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Buffalo, who led the study. “However, the emergency department may not be a good option for all patients. We wanted to see if telemedicine could be used as a gateway to ongoing care. ”
To conduct the study, the team of researchers reviewed records of about 380 patients who were referred to addiction treatment through a network associated with the University of Buffalo between October 2020 and September 2022.
Significant Statistics
Telemedicine call patients were also more likely to attend their initial clinic appointment: 65% of patients referred through a telemedicine call attended a clinic appointment after being referred, in contrast to 32% of patients referred through an ER visit, statistics revealed.
In addition, telemedicine patients were more likely to still receive care after 30 days, with 53 percent still in treatment compared to 22 percent of those referred from an ER.
Perhaps doctors and nurses providing telemedicine services are better and more specifically trained at responding to opioid dependency, the authors noted.
Advantages of Telemedicine
“Trying to educate hundreds of emergency department providers on the approach to opioid use disorder, evaluation, initiating medication, and linking to treatment is very challenging,” said researcher Dr. Renoj Varughese, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Buffalo. “Emergency departments may have varying approaches and varying levels of interest in how they treat these patients.”
Telemedicine might also be a better option because addicts can seek help without delay and are not exposed to other patients and their diseases, as researchers noted, as reported by HealthDay.
“Telemedicine allows us to provide care with minimal stigma, from the patient’s own home, with minimal waiting,” Lynch said in a university news release. “It gives us the ability to take some time and truly deliver effective one-on-one care.”