Pain Management
The Florida Division of Workers Compensation this month published a notice in the Florida Administrative Register announcing plans to review physician dispensing rules.
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. and AbbVie Inc.s Allergan unit on Tuesday reached a $58 million settlement with the city of San Francisco just before completion of a trial over claims that they fueled an opioid epidemic in the city.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Tuesday he was investigating whether Walmart improperly filled prescriptions and failed to report suspicious orders when selling opioid drugs.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave two doctors found guilty of misusing their licenses in the midst of the U.S. opioid epidemic to write thousands of prescriptions for addictive pain medications another chance to challenge their convictions.
The Delaware Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a determination that an injured workers prescribed narcotic pain medications were no longer compensable.
Payments for dermatological agents continue to increase while payments for opioids continue to decline, according to a report released Thursday by the Workers Compensation Research Institute.
The average medical cost-per-claim for injured workers with lower back pain who were treated exclusively by a chiropractor was 61% less than for those who received no chiropractic treatment, according to a new report.
A group of Florida workers compensation insurers is challenging the legitimacy of a state policy they claim improperly requires them to authorize physicians and other providers to dispense medications to injured workers.
The prevalence of opioids in California workers compensation lost-time claims has dropped 51% over the past decade, reducing both average benefit payments and average days away from work on those claims, according to a study released Wednesday by the California Workers’ Compensation Institute.
A lack of transparency in workers compensation pharmacy continues to be an issue for much of the industry, according to a CompPharma study released Tuesday.
Three years after issuing strict guidelines on opioid prescribing that were well-adopted in the workers compensation sector, the U.S. government has issued a new guide for helping patients on long-term opioid prescriptions reduce their medications if possible — a much-needed clarification that will help the industry grapple with the ongoing issue of legacy claims, experts […]
Thomas Gunning, director of labor relations for the Building Trades Employers Association in Braintree, Massachusetts, said he knows the struggle with opioids well.
Getting injured workers back to work is challenging in many sectors, but in labor-intensive and safety-sensitive industries such as construction, return to work is even more of a hurdle, experts say.
The wear and tear construction work inflicts on the human body makes the industry a ground zero for the opioid epidemic, experts say.
Construction workers are more likely to use opioids and cocaine than workers in any other profession, according to a study released Wednesday.
Eighty-one percent of primary care physicians surveyed recently said they are reluctant to take on patients who are currently on opioids, according findings released this month by Quest Diagnostics Inc.
A worker who sustained injuries when his hand was crushed by a machine at work is entitled to workers compensation benefits despite testing positive for marijuana, an appellate court judge in Oklahoma held last week.
The total number of injured workers receiving not-recommended drugs decreased by 67% in Texas’ workers compensation system, according to a report on the effect of the state’s 8-year-old drug formulary that aimed to rein in drugs such as opioids.
A New York town may have to cover an injured police officer’s medical marijuana for chronic pain he suffers after a car accident, a New York appeals court ruled on Thursday in remanding back to a lower court an earlier decision that denied coverage.
Federal law enforcement officials, park rangers and postal workers will be among those affected by new opioid restrictions imposed on injured federal workers, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs said.
Written return to work agreements can be an effective tool in managing employees suffering from opioid addiction, including in the construction sector where injuries and opioid overdoses are particularly prevalent.
The FDA’s recent approval of nine generic versions of one of the most widely prescribed and most expensive brand-name drugs in workers compensation will likely save comp payers money — if insurers can work with doctors to get patients to switch over.
The debate over whether cannabis is preferable to opioids as a pain management treatment presents a “false choice,” and employers should instead focus on how to mitigate cannabis-related risks in their workplaces, experts say.