Pharmacists Are Critical In Opioid Use Disorder Care - Pharmacy Practice News

A summary of Marcus A. Banks' article in Pharmacy Practice News, published April 13, 2026.

A newly enacted federal law and a growing body of practice models are reinforcing what frontline practitioners have long known: pharmacists are essential partners in opioid use disorder (OUD) care. Writing in Pharmacy Practice News, Marcus Banks highlights how the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Reauthorization Act — signed into law in 2025 — creates a pathway for pharmacists to prescribe buprenorphine after completing specialized training developed jointly by the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) and the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE). APhA also helps participating pharmacists secure DEA registration, and the association played a key role in adding the buprenorphine training provision to the bill.

APhA CEO Michael D. Hogue, PharmD, framed the significance clearly in the association's news release: the provision recognizes pharmacists' critical role in addressing the opioid epidemic and, with appropriate training, expands access to treatment and saves lives.

Personalized care at the VA

Banks' reporting centers on two practitioners who demonstrate how this authority plays out day-to-day.

Ashley Maister, PharmD, BCPP, a psychiatric clinical pharmacy practitioner at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center in Philadelphia, described her team's approach during a session at the ASHP Midyear 2025 Clinical Meeting & Exhibition in Las Vegas. The Crescenz VA follows the Stepped Care for Opioid Use Disorder Train the Trainer model (Subst Abus 2020;41[3]:275-282), offering walk-in support Monday through Friday in the behavioral health clinic for veterans currently living with OUD or carrying an OUD diagnosis within the last five years.

Dr. Maister's work spans the full continuum of care. She initiates buprenorphine-naloxone for patients who have never received it, bridging them until they can see a specialist, and she helps established patients transition from sublingual to subcutaneous formulations of medications for OUD (MOUD). For patients who arrive at the clinic after recently using opioids like fentanyl together with stimulants like cocaine, she uses a microinduction protocol — dividing 2- or 8-mg sublingual buprenorphine strips into smaller doses and titrating up to 12 mg daily over seven days (Subst Abuse Rehabil 2016;7:99-105). The approach lets patients begin MOUD while illicit substances are still in their system, avoiding the precipitated withdrawal that can occur when clinicians wait for drugs to fully clear. Her operating principle: clinicians should not wait to give people lifesaving medications.

Extending pharmacist-led OUD care across settings

Paul Stranges, PharmD, MSHI, FCCP, BCACP, a clinical associate professor at the University of Illinois Chicago Retzky College of Pharmacy and co-author of a 2025 white paper on pharmacist contributions to OUD management (J Am Coll Clin Pharm 2025;8[6]:500-510), told Banks that while specialized training is essential, every pharmacist has a role to play. Patients with OUD routinely face access barriers to buprenorphine and naloxone, and pharmacists — as medication experts — have the clinical tools to help resolve them, much as they already do for patients with diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Stranges pointed to several practice settings where pharmacists are already expanding OUD care: facilitating take-home methadone doses at hospital discharge, and assisting with the dispensing and delivery of long-acting injectable buprenorphine. Beyond the SUPPORT Act itself, he noted, pharmacists can directly prescribe and manage MOUD wherever state law, institutional scope of practice, and federal law permit — an efficient way to deliver team-based care.

Why this matters for state-level policy

For practitioners and policymakers tracking pharmacy scope-of-practice issues, the article underscores a point central to the work PharmacyBridge documents: federal authorization is only one piece of the puzzle. As Dr. Stranges noted, pharmacists can prescribe and manage MOUD only when state rules, institutional policy, and federal law all align.

That alignment varies considerably across jurisdictions. According to the data compiled on this site, only four jurisdictions currently allow pharmacists to prescribe buprenorphine independently, and five more permit prescribing under a collaborative practice agreement. For the SUPPORT Act's full benefit to reach patients, state-level rules will need to catch up with what federal law now permits.

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Read the original:

Pharmacists Are Critical In Opioid Use Disorder Care
(https://www.pharmacypracticenews.com/Clinical/Pain/Article/04-26/Opioid-Care-Pharmacists-Critical-In-Disorder-Treatment/80188)
by Marcus A. Banks — Pharmacy Practice News, April 13, 2026.