Workers Comp

Hartford partners with Yale to help treat injured workers

Danielle Ling

November 05, 2021 Reprints

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The Hartford Financial Services Inc. on Friday announced a new partnership with the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine to develop a training program for Connecticut medical providers who treat injured workers, focused on addiction, pain management, and stigma.

The pilot launch follows a record-breaking number of deadly opioid-related overdoses in Connecticut and in the U.S. in 2020, Hartford said.

“The loss and suffering caused by the ongoing opioid crisis is heartbreaking, and now more than ever, it’s important that we all take action to dispel addiction stigma and engage with empathy,” Hartford’s chairman and CEO Christopher Swift said in a statement.

Led by doctors David Fiellin and Jeanette Tetrault, the Yale-PAM will develop the training that will help clinicians identify and treat acute pain, chronic pain, substance misuse, and substance and opioid use disorders among Connecticut workers.

Hartford says the training will be geared toward the use of “person-centered and non-stigmatizing approaches” to addressing pain and addiction and will focus on improved function, as well as a safe return to work.

Phase one of the pilot is underway. Phase two is slated for January to June 2022, in which the training will be delivered to a preliminary cohort of 50 to 100 Connecticut medical professionals who treat workers with acute pain, living with chronic pain and/or a substance use disorder. In the final phase of the pilot, Hartford says the modules will be updated based on the medical providers’ feedback, which is anticipated for the third quarter of 2022.