Injuries in the workplace can sometimes come with chronic physical pain, requiring a complex pain control or pain management treatment plan involving a team of physicians across multiple disciplines.
A workers comp pain management treatment plan takes a lot of time and effort with tedious administrative tasks for a single patient. One of these tasks is to find the proper treatment for the patient’s injury. If you’re not careful, you might end up with a treatment that can harm your injured employee long term.
One of the treatments commonly associated with chronic pain is opioid analgesics in most pain management workers compprograms. These painkiller drugs tend to be misused, which could lead to devastating effects, not just on the patient but also on everyone.
This article will educate employers on what opioids are, their harmful effects on the employee and the business, and how they relate to pain management workers comp.
Opioids For Pain Relief
Opioids are narcotic painkillers that relieve pain by preventing pain signals from reaching the brain and also produce a euphoric (high) effect.
Some of the popular brands of opioids are OxyContin and Percocet. Though they’re effective in addressing chronic pain, the drawback is their high tendency to be misused, leading to overdose deaths.
According to this Washington Post article, Opioid overdose deaths in the United States may have exceeded 90,000 in 2020 – a massive spike from the 70,630 back in 2019. In response to this, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released Opioid prescribing guidelines, instructing doctors to have opioids as a last option for treating chronic pain. But that didn’t stop the Opioid crisis from escalating into an epidemic.
Opioids Misuse And Its Effect On Your Business
Though the dispensing rate declined in 2019, according to the CDC drug overdose map, it continued to remain very high in certain areas in the country, especially Alabama, where for every 100 persons, around 85 are prescribed opioids. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH) finds that roughly 21 to 29 percent of patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain abuse them.
As an employer, you should be aware of the possibility that any of your injured employees coping with chronic pain could be affected. Any drug addiction can have several adverse effects that will impact your other employees and your business as a whole. As mentioned earlier, employees who misuse Opioids could compromise workplace safety, especially if the job involves working from heights, construction sites, or driving.
Moreover, you’re likely to incur larger workers’ compensation costs. Studies have shown, when injured workers are prescribed opioids, their total claim costs can go up to four or eight times more than similar claims with non-opioid treatments.
As you can see, these adverse effects have a direct impact on your business. Fortunately, there is a way to prevent them.
Non-Opioid Pain Management Scheduling
As mentioned earlier, Opioid painkiller misuse can affect every facet of your employee’s life, including work, where they could pose on-the-job safety risks.
One immediate solution is to partner with a company that schedules pain management workers comp recipients can trust. As a business owner, you probably already have a lot on your plate, especially if you’re dealing with multiple injured employees. You’d want to let experts in the medical field handle the complex scheduling process for all your injured workers.
Bottom-line
Ultimately, the goal is to provide a non-opioid workers comp pain management plan for your injured employee/s so they’ll be able to get back on their feet and return to their everyday lives, especially to work. Let a team of seasoned specialists with extensive workers’ compensation and pain management scheduling experience take care of the scheduling, billing, and reporting process.
Make sure that your injured employee is getting the proper care they deserve, without the administrative burdens. Contact Direct Pay Provider Network today! (866) 214-5920 | scheduling@dpaynetwork.com
