There was a minor cock up when this drug was put on sale in the UK - there was some sort of legal reason why it should not be prescribable on "Blue Scripts", making interval prescribing impossible. Soon after there was an unofficial dictat sent out to pharmacists for them to accept Blue Scripts (and be paid for doing so), but now I am happy to tell you that the situation is resolved and it's official, Suboxone MAY BE PRESCRIBED ON FP10MDA - hurrah.
Of course this drug's major selling point over buprenorphine (without naloxone included) is that it is less likely to be diverted because it has no appeal for injecting - so ironically, you might be more inclined to take the patient off supervision more quickly and onto less frequent collections to save the poor old PCT's cash.... and the latest edition of "Addiction" (102) has a study by Prof Bell showing that unsupervised Suboxone is every bit as effective at retaining patients in treatment as supervised buprenorphine - something to ponder.....
