COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Bureau of Workers’
Compensation said it has stepped up monitoring of the millions of doses
of pain pills prescribed to injured workers every year as the agency
tries to control costs and fight rampant prescription drug abuse.
Starting
this month, the state-run insurance program for injured workers said it
no longer covers prescriptions for controlled substances unless the
provider enrolls in an automated reporting system designed to identify
possible misuse of opiates, according to the Dayton Daily News (http://bit.ly/1fpqzH1 ).
During
the past five years, the agency has paid for more than 188.5 million
doses of narcotics prescribed to injured workers. Last year, it spent
$38.2 million for 357,970 prescriptions for opiates to 39,028 claimants.
For
years, the bureau did little to track prescription drugs. But starting
in 2011, it took steps to monitor and reduce prescriptions of overused
drugs. They included 120-day limits on opioids and muscle relaxants
within 12 months, prior authorization requirement for some drugs, and a
requirement that prescribers use the automated reporting system.
"Very
much like other insurers or workers’ comp carriers, we had not paid a
lot of attention to our drug utilization prior that time," agency
pharmacy director John Hanna said. "That’s why you see some of the
dramatic changes. All we’ve done is introduce tools and introduce
policies that should have been in place all along. So, we are playing
catch up in a lot of aspects."
The agency now tracks the opiate
load of every injured worker for every month and is starting to also
track anti-anxiety drugs, since high doses of those two classes of drugs
can be deadly.
Opiate prescriptions for injured workers have
dropped nearly 28 percent and muscle relaxant prescriptions declined
nearly 73 percent in 2013, compared with 2010, the agency said.
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Information from: Dayton Daily News, http://www.daytondailynews.com
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