News Releases

Biden Administration Launches Opioid Tracker, Seeks to Expand Access to Opioid Treatment Programs

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) this week proposed updating opioid treatment program (OTP) standards and admission criteria to expand access to treatment.

The proposed rule, published in the Federal Register on Dec. 16, would:

• Expand the definition of OTP practitioner to include any provider appropriately licensed to dispense or prescribe approved medications.
• No longer require one year of opioid addiction for admission.
• Add evidence-based delivery models such as telehealth.
• Expand patient access to take-home methadone doses.
• No longer require annual reports from practitioners with a waiver to prescribe buprenorphine to up to 275 patients.

Comments on the rule will be accepted through Feb. 14.

White House Launches Online Opioid Overdose Tracker

Also this month, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced a new online dashboard that tracks non-fatal opioid overdoses in the pre-hospital setting using nationally submitted emergency medical services (EMS) data. The dashboard displays:

• The rate of nonfatal opioid overdoses at the state and county level.
• The average number of naloxone doses administered.
• The average EMS time to a patient.
• The percent of patients not taken to a medical facility for further treatment.

The data system recorded 179,260 nonfatal opioid overdoses in the U.S. in the past year and revealed that emergency services took 9.8 minutes on average to reach an overdose patient.

At the county level, the dashboard shows Cuyahoga and Summit counties as much higher than the national average for nonfatal opioid overdose and near the national average for naloxone administrations per overdose patient. Average EMS time to patient is at or below the national average in most Northeast Ohio counties, but above average in Cuyahoga County.

The dashboard is scheduled to be updated weekly with a two-week lag in data. It is designed to serve as a tool for first responders, clinicians and policymakers and empower local communities to better predict areas that are at risk for fatal overdoses so that they can tailor their responses.