Health Care Costs Double for Claimants With Opioid Abuse, Study Finds

Health care costs for injured workers diagnosed as opioid abusers were more than double that of non-abusers in the first 12 months following injury, according to a report in the November edition of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The study, by researchers at Truven Health Analytics in Bethesda, Maryland, and Pfizer Inc. in New York, looked retrospectively at U.S. insurance claims from 2003 to 2014 in which patients received at least one opioid prescription. The Pfizer-funded study included 35,967 opioid-treated employees with a workers’ compensation claim. Claim...