Doctors: Non-Opioid Painkillers Come with own Set of Problems

While much national attention in workers’ compensation is devoted to the cost and overprescription of opioid painkillers, doctors Steven Moskowitz and Hassan Moinzadeh assert that non-opioid pain drugs can pose many of the same problems − increased benefit spending, medical complications and potential for abuse. Further, non-opioid pharmaceuticals cost more to the workers’ compensation system, they say. In a Paradigm Outcomes analysis of 10,000 lost-time claims, non-opioid pharmaceuticals accounted for 17% of total medical spending, compared with 15% for opioids. Moskowitz,...