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aliem.com

Get Waivered

“Get Waivered”

A campaign started by emergency medicine residents at Massachusetts General Hospital to get emergency physicians the DEA X-waiver then needed to prescribe buprenorphine for opioid use disorder. It borrowed marketing tactics - influential faculty went first, a "Get Waivered Month", gold lapel pins and a pinning ceremony with local press - then went national with free training, including a remote course during COVID-19. The X-waiver was abolished at the end of 2022.

Years
2018–2022
Country
United States
Topic
Opioids
Asks people to
Start
Strategy
Brand symbolSelf efficacySocial norms
Channel
Clinical settingEventsWebsite
Audience
Clinicians
Emergency physicians and residents first at MGH, then clinicians of all specialties nationally.

Evidence

ObservationalPositive

MGH ED: a four-part behavioral-science package (one patient-facing, three clinician-facing) added alongside the waiver drive increased ED opioid use disorder treatments by 1.6 per day in a regression-discontinuity-in-time analysis (Butler 2021). Get Waivered Remote (2020): 814 live participants, 95% rated it favorably (Martin 2021, process only). Counts of waivered MGH physicians come from the campaign itself.

Sponsor (who paid)

  • Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine Academic, creator

Credits (who made it)

  • Alister Martin Individual, 2018-2022 source
  • ideas42 Strategy, 2019-2021 source

Related campaigns

Sources

  1. Martin A, Kunzler N, Nakagawa J et al. Get Waivered: A Resident-Driven Campaign to Address the Opioid Overdose Crisis. Ann Emerg Med 74(5):691-696 evaluation · 2019 · DOI 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2019.04.035 · PMID 31272821
  2. Martin A, Raber JP, Shayer D et al. Get waivered remote: Nationwide, remote DEA-x waiver course in response to COVID-19. Digit Health 7 evaluation · 2021 · DOI 10.1177/20552076211048985 · PMID 34691756
  3. Butler K, Chavez T, Wakeman S et al. Nudging Emergency Department-Initiated Addiction Treatment. J Addict Med 16(4):e234-e239 evaluation · 2021 · DOI 10.1097/ADM.0000000000000926 · PMID 34775439
  4. Buprenorphine prescribing: The Get Waivered Initiative makes it easier to get your DEA-X Waiver (ALiEM podcast, 2 Dec 2020) news · 2020
  5. GetWaivered.com (Wayback, Jan 2025) archive · 2025

Research notes

Clinician-facing campaign. Discovered 2026-10-22 for #17 (clinician-campaigns pass). Credits checked 2026-10-22 against fetched pages: ALiEM names Alister Martin as founder; ideas42 is an author affiliation on Butler 2021 (PubMed). startYear 2018 is an estimate (the Ann Emerg Med paper was published 2019); search snippets give "38 of 42 attendings and 22 residents waivered in a 3-month campaign" and "95% of MGH emergency physicians waivered" - not confirmed on an open page (HMP Global article is behind a login; cidh.massgeneral.org did not respond). endYear 2022 = X-waiver removed by the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2023 (MAT Act), signed December 2022; whether Get Waivered continued as an MOUD-prescribing campaign afterward is unconfirmed. Site status 2026-10-22: dead (getwaivered.com refuses connections; the cidh.massgeneral.org portfolio page does not respond); Wayback copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20250112071220/https://getwaivered.com/. Reuse terms checked 2026-10-23 by an AI research pass for #47; not yet reviewed by a person.

Record cases/get-waivered.json, updated 2026-10-23· Link to this campaign