Telehealth medication enabled continuum health care in the U.S.A with minimal risk of Covid-19 transmission. However, despite the DEA restricting controlled substance prescription to only allow audio or visual programs that allow patients to speak with physicians in real-time, it could have negatively implicated the prevalence of Substance Use Disorder (SUD) in America. According to Hser et al. (2021), compared to in-person treatment, telemedicine risks physicians failing to identify drug-seeking behaviors in opioid prescription. Patients may easily adopt manipulative and demanding behavior to obtain the controlled substance in telehealth, which may be unidentified due to lack of contact. For instance, a patient may fake chronic pain that would lead to severe outcomes to get the medication. In-person treatment after the expiry of the emergency policy in Florida will find some patients prescribed opioids and other restricted substances during the telehealth appointments do not need them.
The faulty prescribed patients would have recalibrated the high dependence on controlled substances, particularly opioids. Sustaining the prescriptions will resuscitate the Opioid menace that America has contained. Unregulated opioid prescription creates the risk of recidivism in patients who have already recovered from addiction. Alternatively, ordaining the drug in a significant population is challenging and will cause severe withdrawal effects on the patients. Additionally, it is common for people who undertake Withdrawal Management (WM) to relapse into opioid use. Florida will have to order in-hospital re-examination of patients prescribed opioids using telehealth appointments. Patients who are undertaking faulty medication will have to be subjected to standard care for withdrawal management, including rehabilitation. However, the decision to withdraw opioid use may lead to legal implications since it prohibits the rights of medication administration.
Reference
Hser, Y. I., Ober, A. J., Dopp, A. R., Lin, C., Osterhage, K. P., Clingan, S. E., & Saxon, A. J. (2021). Is telemedicine the answer to rural expansion of medication treatment for opioid use disorder? Early experiences in the feasibility study phase of a National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network Trial. Addiction science & clinical practice, 16(1), 1-8. Web.