Let's talk about the severe shortage of addiction-treatment doctors | Opinion

Scott A. Teitelbaum

Florida is a national leader when it comes to beautiful beaches, citrus production and ... drug overdose deaths.

The Sunshine State, like the United States as a whole, is in the midst of a crisis. In 2018 alone, provisional data indicate there were 4,936 overdose deaths in Florida from drugs including heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our state’s drug overdose rate is higher than the national average. In addition, alcohol and tobacco still take far too many lives, and together with cannabis are the most common drugs used among youth.

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Fortunately, Florida also helps lead the way in training the nation’s addiction-treatment workforce, due in large part to the University of Florida’s longtime commitment to empowering doctors to help prevent, identify and treat people with addiction.

Over the years, my experience as chief of the Division of Addiction Medicine at UF has shown me the power of education in saving lives. Since UF started its Addiction Medicine Fellowship program in 1992, which then became one of the first addiction medicine programs to be accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, we have trained more fellows than any other addiction-medicine program in the country.

Since nearly every practicing doctor today will encounter patients who have, or are at risk for developing, addiction, it is critical that medical education include a baseline understanding of the disease of addiction.

Our approach has had an amplifying effect in Florida and throughout the U.S. But it’s not enough.

Unfortunately, at a time when overdose deaths are at historic highs, there remains a severe shortage of physicians who specialize in addiction medicine or addiction psychiatry.

According to a recent White House report, the U.S. needed 6,000 addiction specialists in 2009, well before the current overdose crisis kicked into high gear. And that same 2017 report also estimated that there were only about 4,400 actively practicing certified addiction specialist physicians in the United States.

Moreover, few medical students receive training in addiction medicine in this country. A recent survey of health care professionals in Massachusetts found that only one in four providers have received training on addiction during medical education. And, even though addiction is treatable, less than half of all emergency room, family medicine and internal medicine providers in that survey believed opioid-use disorder could be treated.

This perception represents a failure of the medical community to prepare America’s doctors and other clinicians for patients presenting with addiction and protect the health of some of the most vulnerable patients we will ever encounter.

Recognizing this problem, congressional members from both sides of the aisle recently introduced a bipartisan bill to strengthen the addiction-treatment workforce.

If passed, the Opioid Workforce Act (HR 3414/S 2892) would provide an additional 1,000 graduate medical education slots over current levels to qualifying hospitals with approved residency programs in addiction medicine, addiction psychiatry, pain medicine, and corresponding prerequisite programs.

This critical funding will enable more programs around the country to follow UF’s lead and train the next generation of addiction medicine specialists.

To ensure the Sunshine State continues to be a leader in addiction medicine, I call on Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, as well as Florida’s entire congressional delegation, to support the Opioid Workforce Act.

We have a moral imperative to act and implement smart, comprehensive policy to address this crisis and help prevent future ones.

Dr. Scott A. Teitelbaum is the Pottash Professor in Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, where he serves as vice chair of the Department of Psychiatry, chief of the Division of Addiction Medicine, medical director of the UF Health Florida Recovery Center, and fellowship director of UF’s Addiction Medicine Fellowship program. He is also a member of the board of directors for the American Society of Addiction Medicine.