Characteristics of certified community behavioral health clinics that offer long-acting injectable medications for opioid use disorders

Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics provide a comprehensive model of care and have a large national footprint. Despite this, there is low prevalence of providing medications for opioid use disorder, especially newer long-acting injectable (LAI) formulations that may benefit patients. Thus, Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics are an excellent setting to implement strategies to improve uptake of LAIs. This study examines Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics’ organizational-level characteristics that are associated with LAI-buprenorphine for opioid use disorder usage to identify factors to focus implementation efforts within the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research 2.0 model. This cross-sectional study uses the 2022 National Substance Use and Mental Health Services Survey. We calculated descriptive statistics and conducted \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) and logistic regression analyses to examine variables associated with offering LAI-buprenorphine for opioid use disorder. Of 419 medications for opioid use disorder-providing Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, the majority did not offer LAI-buprenorphine ( n = 325; 77.6%). In general, Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics were more likely to offer LAI-buprenorphine if they were Northeastern and used intensive quality improvement activities ( \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) = 71.307, df = 10, R 2 = 0.318). Our exploratory analysis indicated programs were more likely to offer LAI-buprenorphine if they had clinic/network prescriber availability ( \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) = 26.25, df = 6, R 2 = 0.153). Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics may be an excellent setting to focus LAI-buprenorphine for opioid use disorder implementation due to their comprehensive model and national footprint. Study findings highlight organizational factors that could be targeted to guide improvement.