Payers Can Play a Role in Encouraging Naloxone Coprescribing

Feb 24
Feb 24, 2022

To prevent deaths and injuries related to prescription opioid misuse, research has shown that coprescribing the overdose-treatment drug naloxone when patients on chronic pain-management therapy receive high doses of opioids can make a big difference. Yet federal data show that less than 1% of patients who should be prescribed naloxone with their opioid medications obtain a prescription for it — a rate that managed care entities can play a role in changing, according to a new paper from the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) Addiction Advisory Group.

The AMCP Addiction Advisory Group in 2019 polled AMCP payer members, addiction treatment providers and managed behavioral health organizations, with the goal of understanding and evaluating “trends in treatment, coverage, policies, and needs associated with providing health services to patients with substance use disorders.” One particularly notable finding was that 80% of the managed behavioral health organizations and 47% of AMCP payer members who responded to the survey encouraged naloxone coprescribing in patients at high risk of overdose, but “no organizations required coprescribing.”
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Leslie Small

Leslie has been working in journalism since 2009 and reporting on the health care industry since 2014. She has covered the many ups and downs of the Affordable Care Act exchanges, the failed health insurer mega-mergers, and hundreds of other storylines spanning subjects such as Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage, employer-sponsored insurance, and prescription drug coverage. As the managing editor of Health Plan Weekly and Radar on Drug Benefits, she writes and edits for both publications while overseeing a small team of reporters who also focus on the managed care sector. Before joining AIS Health, she was a senior editor for the e-newsletter Fierce Health Payer, and she started her career as a copy editor at multiple local newspapers. She graduated with a dual degree in journalism and political science from Penn State University.