Availability of outpatient methadone maintenance

Background Multiple forms of effective treatment for opioid use disorders (OUDs) exist, but they have remained in short supply and have been underutilized where available. Simultaneously, OUDs persist as a large and growing public health problem across the United States, leading to epidemic levels of overdose death as well as many other damaging societal consequences. Our goal was to assess the current state of the U.S. substance abuse treatment system and measure its capacity for treating OUDs. Focusing on outpatient methadone maintenance therapy (OPMM), an effective but less frequently studied treatment in recent years, we investigated two primary questions about privately-run substance abuse treatment facilities: 1) What facility-level characteristics best predicted the provision of OPMM? 2) How much of the variation in OPMM availability was attributable to differences between states?