Medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) reduces harms associated with opioid use disorder (OUD), including risk of overdose. Understanding how variation in MOUD duration influences overdose risk is important as health-care payers increasingly remove barriers to treatment continuation (e.g. prior authorization). This study from HIP Investigator Dr. Marguerite Burns measured the association between MOUD continuation, relative to discontinuation, and opioid-related overdose among Medicaid beneficiaries.
A total of 293,180 Medicaid beneficiaries from Medicaid programs in 11 US states aged 18-64 years with a diagnosis of OUD and had a first MOUD claim between 2016 and 2017 were analyzed. The study found that continuation of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) in US Medicaid beneficiaries was associated with a substantial reduction in overdose risk up to 12 months after the first claim for MOUD.
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