State Makes Progress in Curtailing Injured Workers' Opioid Use

Thursday, April 7, 2016 | 0

Total opioid doses for injured workers have dropped by 41% in Ohio after the state’s Bureau of Workers’ Compensation implemented a pharmacy management program that includes a closed prescription-drug formulary in 2011, BWC officials said.

And BWC said the average daily opioid load per injured worker has fallen below levels seen in 2003, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

John Hanna, BWC’s pharmacy program director, told the Dispatch that the number of workers considered to be opioid-dependent has declined from 9,343 in 2011 to 4,723. Opioid dependency was defined as being prescribed the equivalent of 60 milligrams per day or more of Vicodin for 60 days.

Now, the BWC wants to take the additional step of adding opioid-prescribing guidelines to the state administrative code that would include provisions for weaning injured workers off opioids.

One potential sticking point in the proposed administrative rule is a requirement to document “clinically meaningful improvement in function” in order to justify long-term prescribing of opioids to an injured worker, Dr. Kort Gronbach, a member of BWC’s pharmacy and therapeutics committee, told the Dispatch. Gronbach noted that pain is subjective and impossible to measure.