The average length of lost-time payments to injured workers decreased, by about 18%, in Washington state after the Department of Labor and Industries implemented new controls on opioid prescribing in 2013, according to a new study.
Findings of the study, conducted by Dr. Gary Franklin and colleagues from L&I, were published last month in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.
In 2013, L&I started requiring that injured workers show improvements in pain and function in order for opioids to be approved beyond the acute pain period, considered to be the six weeks after an injury.
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