37% People Prescribed Buprenorphine In 2024 Never Filled The First Prescription

About 37% people who were prescribed buprenorphine, a medication used to treat opioid use disorder (OUD), for the first time in 2024 never picked it up at the pharmacy, according to a recent study. The share of first buprenorphine prescriptions that went unfilled climbed steadily each year, starting at 19% in 2020. Earlier research had already found that 32% of buprenorphine prescriptions written between 2015 and 2019 went undispensed, and a separate 2022 estimate found that only one in four adults in the United States who needed medication for OUD actually received it.

Researchers conducted a retrospective study using deidentified . . .