On January 17, 2025, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) jointly issued a “final rule” allowing for the prescription of buprenorphine via telehealth services. Without the final rule, telehealth services for opioid use disorder (OUD) were scheduled to end on December 31, 2025.

Substance use prevention and treatment journalist Marcelo Fernández-Viña explains the history of telehealth for OUD for the Pew Charitable Trusts:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government temporarily allowed telehealth flexibilities for addiction treatment so that patients could practice social distancing rather than go to a provider’s office.

After four consecutive extensions, the telehealth rule was due to expire at the end of 2025. The final rule allows for telehealth services for addiction treatment as standard practice now. The expanded access to addiction treatment has many benefits, including:

• Patients can stay on medication even if they miss an in-person meeting with their physician.

• Patients can receive addiction treatment via telehealth even without first seeing a doctor in person.

• Patients can receive up to six months of telehealth treatment before an in-person visit is required. The old rules allowed only 30 days.

• Helps patients in remote areas get treatment and stay in treatment.

• “Onerous recordkeeping requirements” have been removed.

“The final rule is more flexible for patients seeking treatment and should save lives,” writes Fernández-Viña. He points to studies that show that more OUD patients started on buprenorphine and more stayed on it under the expanded telehealth services.

The DEA and HHS held listening sessions in 2023 and 2024 that involved “Approximately 58 stakeholders, including DEA-registered institutional and individual practitioners, pharmacists, trade associations, state agencies, and other public interest groups.” Both DEA and HHS concluded that “the benefits of increasing access to buprenorphine outweigh any added risk of diversion.” 

Fernández-Viña summarizes the results of these follow-up studies:

Remote prescribing of the drug has helped more patients start and stay in treatment without increasing overdose deaths. And that success has been critical for a range of people, including veterans, people experiencing homelessness, people involved in the criminal legal system, people living in rural areas, and members of racial and ethnic minority groups.

All in all, the final rule represents a reasonable response to the evidence. Telehealth for OUD was expanded, and it resulted in more people getting treatment, more people staying in treatment, and no significant increase in drug diversion (patients selling or giving away prescribed drugs). Congratulations to these agencies for assessing the data and liberalizing access to addiction treatment.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published January 28, 2026.

Sources:

“Federal Government Permanently Extends Addiction Treatment Through Telehealth,” Pew Charitable Trusts, January 15, 2026.

“Expansion of Buprenorphine Treatment via Telemedicine Encounter,” A Rule by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Health and Human Services Department, January 17, 2025.

“Pandemic telehealth flexibilities for buprenorphine treatment: a synthesis of evidence and policy implications for expanding opioid use disorder care in the United States,” Health Affairs Scholar, July 2023.

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