Covid-19 has streamlined addiction medicine. Will the changes stick?
Nicole Godinez’s monthly visit to an addiction clinic typically takes several hours: To start, there’s the 35-minute drive to a Nashville suburb, the waiting room, and the paperwork. Then the repetitive questioning from a drug counselor, then the drug test. Finally, there’s the in-person visit with a doctor who refills her 28-day prescription for Subutex, a common but highly controlled medication used to treat opioid dependence.
But in March, Godinez was sure she’d miss the appointment. She’d just delivered twins by C-section, and couldn’t drive. One of her 3-week-old boys was still in intensive care, and she refused to leave his side. And then, of course, there was the pandemic. In the previous two weeks, health officials across Tennessee had reported 4,500 new coronavirus cases. Godinez thought she’d be forced to make an impossible choice: Her own care, or potentially exposing herself and her twins to Covid-19.
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