The waiver, which can be granted after the completion of an eight-hour course, is required for outpatient treatment of opioid addiction with buprenorphine. Initially, the number of people each approved physician could treat was limited to 10. This was eventually modified to allow approved physicians to treat up to 100 people with buprenorphine for opioid addiction in an outpatient setting. This limit was increased by the Obama administration, raising the number of patients to which doctors can prescribe to 275. On January 14, 2021, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced that the waiver would no longer be required to prescribe buprenorphine to treat up to 30 people concurrently.