Nine former players in the National Football League filed the purported class-action lawsuit. It alleges numerous ways in which the League negligently facilitated the distribution of controlled substances. The case is one in a string of cases seeking to hold the League liable for tort damages to get around workers’ comp exclusivity provisions. The district …
California’s workers’ comp industry is continuing to make progress in weeing itself off its opioid addiction. New data from the California Workers’ Compensation Institute indicates that not only is the percentage of claims with opioid prescriptions down, the claims that do involve opioids are now using lower dosages and have fewer opioid prescriptions overall. The …
Curbing opioid abuse is a priority at all levels of government. Meeting this challenge begins with making certain that best practices are employed by medical professionals when prescribing opioids. For the California physician, three separate guidelines can affect the way opioids are prescribed and dispensed to injured workers. First, there is the 2016 guideline from …
The opioid crisis in America is not a recent development. It has as its genesis a wide range of causes, from efforts to treat chronic pain to diversion of drugs manufactured legally within the United States to the heroin trade in South America and, more recently, to the illicit manufacturing of synthetic opioids in China. …
California’s workers’ comp system is operating under new medical treatment guidelines governing the use of opioids to treat injured workers. The updated guidelines are now a stand-alone section of the state’s Medical Treatment Utilization Schedule (MTUS) rather than a component of the guidelines for treating chronic pain. The MTUS are the standard for providing evidence-based …
The opioid epidemic for workers’ comp claimants appears to be easing as researchers note that utilization of opioids continued to trend downward in 2015. The latest data from the pharmacy benefit management firm Express Scripts shows that utilization of prescriptions drugs was down overall last year as well, but an increase in drug pricing pushed …
The Division of Workers’ Compensation expects to begin formal rulemaking for new opioid treatment guidelines as well as an update to the chronic pain treatment guidelines before the end of the month. The formal proposal will be an updated version of the regulations that were circulated nearly a year ago. DWC medical director Rupali Das …