Course offered for providers who treat opioid addiction

A free buprenorphine waiver training course for healthcare providers will be held next week at UHS.

The course, designed for physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners, will be taught by Peter Ronan, MD, and Julia Hunter, MD, MPH, addiction medicine specialists at UHS.

The in-person training will be held from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., on Saturday, Aug. 19, in the Russell Room, at UHS Binghamton General Hospital, 10-42 Mitchell Ave., Binghamton.

A light breakfast will be provided. Continuing medical education credits will be available.

The program, offered in concert with the New York State Department of Health’s AIDS Institute, is designed to fulfill the training requirement for providers who wish to prescribe buprenorphine/naloxone.

The course is part of an effort to encourage primary care providers to treat patients with opioid use disorders at the medical home level.

Dr. Ronan, medical director of Addiction Medicine at UHS, noted that opioid use disorder is a chronic, relapsing and remitting disease - like diabetes, asthma or high blood pressure - that can often be successfully managed in the primary care setting.

UHS is working to implement the hub-and-spoke treatment model, which proposes that the majority of patients with opioid use disorder receive treatment with buprenorphine/naloxone in their primary care medical homes, which function as the “spokes.”

“Patients who are medically appropriate for methadone or who are in need of a higher level of care receive treatment at a ‘hub,’ a specialized opioid treatment program,” said Dr. Hunter, MD, MPH, assistant medical director of Addiction Medicine at UHS.

Instead of isolated clinics providing the only treatment option available, the hubs become specialty referral centers for addiction medicine, or places where patients with the most severe iillness can be stabilized and treated.

Patients on buprenorphine/naloxone can transfer between the hub and the spokes depending on their clinical course.

Providers who are interested in signing up for the training should note the following:

The in-person session is the first part of the minimum eight-hour training program to qualify for the buprenorphine waiver.

The second required part is online training, which can be completed before or within 30 days after the in-person training, and which can be accessed at: www.cvent.com.

Currently, nurse practitioners and physician assistants must take an additional 16 hours of online training, available on the PCSS-MAT website.

To participate, attendees must register by 2 p.m., on Thursday, Aug. 17, by clicking here.

Questions may be directed to Dr. Hunter at julia.hunter@nyuhs.org.