Toward Fairness in Machine Learning Models for Predicting Treatment Retention and Premature Discontinuation in Medication for Opioid Use Disorder

arXiv:2609.22113v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Persistent low retention and completion rates in medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) have driven the use of machine learning (ML) models to predict retention and identify patients at risk of premature discontinuation. However, the fairness of these models across patient populations remains largely unexplored, raising concerns about their application in treatment decision support. This study systematically assesses algorithmic fairness in ML models for predicting MOUD retention and premature discontinuation and investigates the effectiveness of bias mitigation techniques. Using the cross-sectional Treatment Episode Data Set-Discharges (TEDS-D), which includes treatment episodes for individuals in the U.S. discharged between 2015 and 2019, we trained four ML models to predict premature treatment discontinuation and retention beyond 180 days among individuals receiving outpatient MOUD. We evaluated overall performance and subgroup-level error rates across patient subgroups defined by race, ethnicity, age, and sex, complemented by model explanation analyses. We further assessed bias mitigation techniques and their effects on both fairness and predictive performance. Our findings demonstrate that ML models for MOUD outcome prediction can exhibit subgroup-level performance gaps even when overall predictive performance appears acceptable and that bias mitigation can reduce, but not fully eliminate, these gaps without trade-offs. By demonstrating the importance of fairness-aware evaluation and transparent reporting of subgroup

Study finds ML models may be unfair, raising concerns about treatment decision support.

SOURCE     arXiv cs.LG (Machine Learning) (tier 1)
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DOCUMENT   03630216-8f79-4d7a-9a57-c7ebe0adde12
           https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.22113
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EVIDENCE   2 extracted excerpts
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MODEL RUN  1 run, methodology 1.0.1
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SCORE      -50  (Adverse)
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CONFIDENCE 80%