Importance: Skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) are being referred more individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD), even when their medical needs are not directly associated with OUD.
Objective: To characterize factors that influence SNF admission for individuals with OUD and identify strategies for providing medications for OUD (MOUD) in SNFs.
Design, setting, and participants: In this semistructured qualitative study, interviews were conducted with SNF administrators from 27 SNFs in Rhode Island from November 5, 2021, to April 27, 2022. Data analysis occurred from August 22, 2022, to May 31, 2023.
Main outcomes and measures: Themes and subthemes on administrator perspectives on admissions and care for people with OUD in SNFs. Audio interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using codebook thematic analysis and guided by community-engaged and participatory research principles.
Results: The study included 29 participants representing 27 SNFs in Rhode Island. Participant roles were administrators (17 participants [59%]), directors of nursing (6 participants [21%]), directors of admissions (5 participants [17%]), and unit managers (1 participant [3%]). Participants described active substance use, Medicaid insurance, housing instability, and younger age as potential barriers to SNF admission for individuals with OUD. The lack of formal guidelines for OUD management, staff shortages, facility liability, state regulations, and skills and training deficits among staff were cited among challenges of effectively meeting the needs of residents with OUD. Many participants reported inadequate institutional capacity as a source of negative outcomes for people with OUD yet expressed their concerns by characterizing individuals with OUD as potentially violent, nonadherent, or likely to bring undesirable elements into facilities. Participants also shared strategies they used to better serve residents with OUD, including providing transportation to support group meetings in the community, delivery in advance of resident arrival of predosed methadone, and telemedicine through the state's hotline to prescribe buprenorphine.
Conclusions and relevance: In this qualitative study of administrator perspectives about admissions and care for individuals with OUD in SNFs, gaps in institutional capacity overlapped with stigmatizing beliefs about OUD; such beliefs perpetuate discrimination of individuals with OUD. Adequate SNF funding and staffing combined with OUD-specific interventions (eg, antistigma training, community partnerships for MOUD and recovery support) could incentivize SNFs to serve individuals with OUD and facilitate OUD care consistent with practice guidelines.