• Michelle Geyer Thompson, Akira Kuriyama, Toru Yoshino, Mary G Murphy, and Jeffrey L Jackson.
• Clement J Zablocki Wis Veteran Administration Medical Center, Milwaukee, Wis. Electronic address: michelle.thompson5@va.gov.
• Am. J. Med. 2024 Mar 1; 137 (3): 280283280-283.

BackgroundBuprenorphine is effective for the treatment of opioid use disorder and chronic pain, has a safer pharmacological profile than full mu-opioid agonists, and can now be prescribed by any US provider with a Drug Enforcement Administration license. This study aimed to examine a decade of buprenorphine prescribing patterns in the United States.MethodsWe abstracted opioid and buprenorphine prescribing patterns, including patient characteristics, from the 2010-2019 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, a national probability sample of non-federal, ambulatory encounters.DiscussionAmong 248,164 ambulatory encounters, opioids were prescribed 2.6%-4.3% of the time with a rate that peaked in 2013 and has been steadily declining. Buprenorphine was infrequently prescribed. Patients receiving buprenorphine were predominantly male (59%), white (70%), younger in age, and had higher rates of substance use disorder (72%).ConclusionBuprenorphine is infrequently used, despite being effective for pain and safer than full mu-opioid agonists. The Drug Enforcement Administration recently ended the requirement for prescribers to obtain an X-waiver, which may increase the rate of buprenorphine use among US practitioners.Published by Elsevier Inc.

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