Number of opioid-dependent injured workers drops in Ohio
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The number of opioid-dependent injured workers under treatment in the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation system fell 19% in 2017, the sixth consecutive year the numbers have fallen under the bureau’s efforts to reduce opioid patients, regulators announced Thursday.
The number of injured workers who met or exceeded the threshold of being clinically dependent on opioids fell to 3,315 at the end of fiscal year 2017, a 59% decrease since 2011, the bureau said in a statement. Total drug costs also fell to $86 million in 2017, $47 million less than in 2011. The figure amounts to $24 million less on opioids since 2011.
“That means we have 4,714 fewer injured workers at risk for opioid addiction, overdose and death than we had in 2011,” the bureau’s pharmacy director, Nick Trego, told the board’s Medical Services and Safety committee Thursday, according to the statement. “These falling numbers are the direct result of our efforts to improve our protocols, more closely monitor our opioid population and encourage best practices from our prescribers.”
Mr. Trego also credited “the growing awareness of the opioid epidemic and efforts by the health care community, government and others to do something about it,” according to the statement.
The bureau expects the opioid numbers to continue to fall as prescription protocols evolve and alternative pain therapies emerge, according to the statement.
“Weaning a dependent person off opioids, or at least to safer levels, is a long, deliberate process requiring cooperation from the injured worker, health care providers and the worker’s support network,” Mr. Trego told the board, according to the statement. “We’re just one part of that equation, but we’re committed to it.”
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