Initiation of medication for opioid use disorder across a health system: A retrospective analysis of patient characteristics and inpatient outcomes.

Objectives: Medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) has gained significant momentum as an evidence-based intervention for treating opioid use disorder (OUD). The purpose of this study was to characterize MOUD initiations for buprenorphine and extended release (ER) naltrexone across all care sites at a major health system in the Midwest and determine whether MOUD initiation was associated with inpatient outcomes.

Methods: The study population comprised patients with OUD in the health system between 2018 and 2021. First, we described characteristics of all MOUD initiations for the study population within the health system. Second, we compared inpatient length of stay (LOS) and unplanned readmission rates between patients prescribed MOUD and patients not prescribed MOUD, including a pre-post comparison of patients prescribed MOUD before versus after initiation.

Results: The 3,831 patients receiving MOUD were mostly white, non-Hispanic and generally received buprenorphine over ER naltrexone. 65.5% of most recent initiations occurred in an inpatient setting. Compared to those not prescribed MOUD, inpatient encounters where patients received MOUD on or before the admission date were significantly less likely to be unplanned readmissions (13% vs. 20%, < 0.001) and their LOS was 0.14 days shorter ( = 0.278). Among patients prescribed MOUD, there was a significant reduction in the readmission rate after initiation compared to before (13% vs. 22%, < 0.001).

Conclusions: This study is the first to examine MOUD initiations for thousands of patients across multiple care sites in a health system, finding that receiving MOUD is associated with clinically meaningful reductions in readmission rates.