The American Hospital Association is asking the Drug Enforcement Administration to extend and clarify pandemic-era rules that allowed providers to prescribe addiction-treatment medications through telehealth.
Amid the pandemic, the DEA waived the requirement that providers see patients in person before prescribing buprenorphine and allowed telephone evaluations for the drug. But those flexibilities could end with next year's scheduled expiration of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
The American Hospital Association is seeking clarity on whether these virtual prescribing rules will be permanent and an interim continuity-of-care plan for when the public health emergency expires.
"Considering unprecedented staffing shortages, provider burnout and financial constraints, it is critical that hospitals have adequate time to reallocate resources to operationalize regulation components," Stacey Hughes, executive vice president of government relations and public policy for the American Hospital Association, wrote in the Dec. 1 letter to the DEA.
She noted that the waivers have greatly improved access to care for patients with substance use disorder.