Offering nurse care management for opioid use disorder in primary care: Impact on emergency and hospital utilization in a cluster-randomized implementation trial.

Patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) have increased emergency and hospital utilization. The PROUD trial showed that implementation of office-based addiction treatment (OBAT) increased OUD medication treatment compared to usual care, but did not decrease acute care utilization in patients with OUD documented pre-randomization (clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03407638). This paper reports secondary emergency and hospital utilization outcomes in patients with documented OUD in the PROUD trial.

This cluster-randomized implementation trial was conducted in 12 clinics from 6 diverse health systems (March 2015-February 2020). Patients who visited trial clinics and had an OUD diagnosis within 3 years pre-randomization were included in primary analyses; secondary analyses added patients with OUD who were new to the clinic or with newly-documented OUD post-randomization. Outcomes included days of emergency care and hospital utilization over 2 years post-randomization. Explanatory outcomes included measures of OUD treatment. Patient-level analyses used mixed-effect regression with clinic-specific random intercepts.

Among 1988 patients with documented OUD seen pre-randomization (mean age 49, 53% female), days of emergency care or hospitalization did not differ between intervention and usual care; OUD treatment also did not differ. In secondary analyses among 1347 patients with OUD post-randomization, there remained no difference in emergency or hospital utilization despite intervention patients receiving 32.2 (95% CI 4.7, 59.7) more days of OUD treatment relative to usual care.

Conclusions: Implementation of OBAT did not reduce emergency or hospital utilization among patients with OUD, even in the sample with OUD first documented post-randomization in whom the intervention increased treatment.

Related protocols: CTN-0074