More than 150 people a day die of overdoses related to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, and disproportionate share of the dead will be from rural areas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Given the magnitude of loss and the prevalence of fentanyl in most illicit drugs, more rural medical providers are prescribing buprenorphine for patients struggling to end their addictions, and treatment advocates are pushing them to do more, Tony Leys reports for Kaiser Health News: "The number of U.S. health care providers certified to prescribe buprenorphine more than doubled in the past four years. Treatment advocates hope to see that trend continue."

Buprenorphine, best known by the brand Suboxone, "does not cause the same kind of high as other opioid drugs do, but it can prevent the debilitating withdrawal effects experienced with those drugs," Leys notes. "Without that help, many people relapse into risky drug use."

Such "maintenance treatment" has been done mainly with methadone, but it "is tightly regulated, due to concerns that it can be abused," Leys explains. "Only specialized clinics offer methadone maintenance treatment, and most of them are in cities. Many patients starting methadone treatment are required to travel daily to the clinics, where staffers watch them swallow their medicine."

Read the full article about rural healthcare for drug addiction by Heather Close at The Rural Blog.