New Opioid Prescribing Rules Would Hold Doctors More Accountable

Rules proposed by the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation would punish doctors who fail to use best practices when prescribing opioids and would block reimbursement for those prescriptions. Ohio led the nation in drug overdose deaths in 2014 with 2,744, most of them attributed to opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The legislature’s Joint Committee on Agency Review must approve the new prescribing rules, which then would take effect Oct. 1 for claims with a date of injury on or after Sept. 1 and for all other claims on or after Jan. 1. The panel...