I'm talking about opioid addiction.
In his seminal white paper, published by WorkCompCentral, Peter Rousmaniere presents an overview of how workers' compensation fueled the opioid epidemic, and matter of factly states that "the use of opioids is by far the most controversial and risky kind of care in workers' comp."
One of the driving forces behind the over-prescription of narcotics in workers' compensation is chronic pain. The data is incontrovertible - the longer a treatment case stays open and left unattended by even nearly benign, conservative care, the more the acute pain patient becomes chronic.
There are many potential explanations for this, but I think one of the most compelling is in the brain's curious way of mapping itself into behavior; behavior that essentially gets learned by the brain.
This is called neuroplasticity. The brain can learn pain, and the brain can learn relief.
But most workers' compensation victims are devoid of the resources to enable reformatting of the brain to deal with pain. There are many reasons for this, and certainly the industry's reaction to over-zealous physical medicine providers has contributed to the reduced bag of tricks that treaters previously used to deal with pain.
Pills are easy to dispense, and easy to take. And the habit is well supported by pharmaceutical concerns eager to please Wall Street.
The medical community is happy with the pill dispensing too - we have all seen physician revenue enhancement systems pitched by pharmacological monitors...
In the past few years there has been so much negative publicity and public awareness of opioid issues that there has been a decline in prescription habits, and consequently a decline in opioid related health problems (which include overdose deaths among a host of other complications).
Still, there is a hangover and we have chronic pain, and opioid addiction, to deal with real time, and in an ongoing manner.
Dealing with chronic pain is of primary concern to the workers' compensation industry. If we can't remedy chronic pain then claims never close, and consequently end up worse and more costly.
Today I'm hosting a free 2 hour webinar: "We're Beating Back Opioids - Now What?"
In addition to white paper author Peter Rousmaniere, my guests include CompPharma's Joe Paduda, David Hanscom, MD, Michael Shor, MPH, and Webility's Jennifer Christian, MD. These folks are on the leading edge of chronic pain research and remedies, and will present strategies for the claims industry to deal with chronic pain, opioid addiction, and moving on to the next chapter in the lives of traumatically injured workers.
Registration for the webinar, which starts at 1 p.m. Pacific Time is at https://www.workcompcentral.com/education/course/course_pk/958.
I hope you'll join us.
Fence of addiction discrimination is getting folks dead. PERIOD folks dont care if iw workes hang form the ceiling let alone if we OD.
ReplyDeleteTHIS is big pharma weening folks off the old drugs so as to make money off the new ones...
We have always had guns, drugs, and mental health issues.... compare our rising SI rates and violent mass shooting rates with these ALEC made state med tort and work comp laws that have been implemented over the last 15 years.... you see its not the drugs the guns nor the mh,,, the root cause to all this is the injustice in our care and the civil rights violations going on...
I would love to take a hammer band beat a DRS foot with it to a bloody pulp... then ask him to take deep breaths and mindfullness to endure the pain..... I would like to see these purist breed DRS. try and will their diarhea away????? that their anti depresents give you....
BS We have always had opiates, guns, and mh,,,,, the root issues and why folks are chosing to check out.... is this place suck for eltie whores have taken it over. and are trying to push their purist breed ways down our throats to a point that its getting folks killed.
KEEP it up you do gooders you do good us all into a civil war.