Indivior expects benefits from new US legislation
Updated : 09:03
Indivior said the US government's new healthcare legislation will make treatment for opioid addiction "more immediately accessible" for patients.
Overnight, President Donald Trump signed 'HR 6' into the law, also known as the “Substance Use–Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act” or the “Support for Patients and Communities Act”.
The act aims to address the opioid crisis by reducing access to and the supply of opioids and by expanding access to prevention, treatment, and recovery services.
Indivior, which makes opioid addiction treatments based using buprenorphine, a semi-synthetic opioid used to treat opioid addiction as well as acute and chronic pain.
HR 6 expands access to buprenorphine medication-assisted treatment, Indivior said, by making the buprenorphine prescribing authority permanent for nurse practitioners and physician assistants, allowing for specialty pharmacy distribution of injectable medications to treat the addiction.
Crucially, it would seem, for Indivior's new monthly Sublocade treatment, the new legislation allows for administration of injectable treatments by non-waivered healthcare practitioners and allows waivered practitioners to immediately treat 100 patients at a time if the practitioner is board certified in addiction medicine or addiction psychiatry, or in a qualified practice setting.
"This bipartisan effort will improve the ability of patients with opioid use disorder to access treatment and begin their path to recovery. This is critical in the fight against the increasing number of human lives lost to opioid overdose in the United States every year," said Shaun Thaxter, Indivior's chief executive officer.
"We know from our decades-long commitment to helping patients with this complex and stigmatized disease that there is a small window of time when a person is emotionally and physically able to pursue treatment. HR 6 will make treatment more immediately accessible and allow healthcare professionals to care for more patients when they decide to seek help."