A comparison of patients with opioid use disorder receiving buprenorphine treatment with and without peer recovery support services

ABSTRACT

Background

Opioid addiction continues to be a crisis within the United States. Pharmacological treatments have been studied extensively and are considered superior treatment methods for opioid use disorder (OUD). Adjunctive therapy to pharmacological interventions, including peer recovery support services (PRSS), is also available for patients with OUD, but is less studied. PRSS are designed to provide individual coordination services for patients seeking recovery and treatment, administered by individuals who have lived through the substance use disorder and recovery process.

Methods

An observational study looking at differences in demographics and treatment engagement between individuals with OUD who were and were not receiving PRSS was conducted.

Results

ANOVA and chi square analyses indicated no significant demographic differences between groups; however, additional ANOVA analyses demonstrated that patients receiving PRSS attended significantly more OUD medical appointments when compared to their non-PRSS counterparts, F(1, 275) = 8.72, p = .003. A negative binomial regression analysis indicated that receiving PRSS was associated with a greater number of OUD medical appointments attended, even after controlling for length of time in treatment.

Conclusions

While these results suggest that PRSS may increase treatment engagement in patients with OUD, additional research that uses randomized designs is needed to examine the impact of PRSS on treatment engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Opioid
• addiction
• medication for addiction treatment
• peer recovery support services

Disclosure statement

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views PACMAT or the Pennsylvania State Department of Health.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Levene’s test showed that the group variances for number of medical appointments attended were not equal, F(1, 275) = 4.55, p = .034. Since group sizes were also unequal, we report the results of Welch’s test.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health under grant R33-AT01011, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) and through state opioid response funds provided by the Pennsylvania Coordination of Medication Assisted Treatment (PACMAT) through grant number 4100078566, RFA 67-62 from the Pennsylvania Commonwealth.