Researchers Beginning to Find Benefits of Opioid Guidelines

Even though opioid prescribing guidelines are being used more widely, including in workers’ compensation, few research studies have looked at to what extent use of the guidelines lowers medical costs, reduces opioid use or improves patient outcomes. Those questions are addressed in two separate studies published in this month’s edition of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. One study, from researchers at the ReedGroup and Kaiser Permanente, found that short-term disability claims involving carpal tunnel release surgery had disability durations that were 1.9 da...