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The use of narcotics in treating injured workers faces heavy scrutiny today – and for good reason. The latest National Council on Compensation Insurance, Inc. (NCCI) Annual Issues Symposium found that:

• The average cost of narcotics per Workers Comp claim rose from $39 in 2003 to $59 in 2011. This is a rate of 0.79 narcotic prescriptions per claim, up from 0.56 in 2003 – a 14% increase in eight years.
• More than 5% percent of Comp claims that resulted in at least one prescription for if any medication included five or more narcotics prescriptions.

To curb the prescribing of narcotics for your injured employees, start by choosing the right Workers Comp physician.

In most states, businesses have the legal right to designate the physician that injured employees must use. To find a physician in your area who is board certified in Occupational Medicine, go to http://www.acoem.org/. If none is available, look for a doctor who takes patients on Workers Compensation. In many cases, urgent care clinics make great partners. Once you find a physician, talk to him or her about your business, discuss your return-to-work program and the types of transitional jobs you offer – and ask about their attitude toward prescribing narcotics.

Even if state law prohibits you from requiring injured workers to see a specific physician, you can still suggest that they do so. For example, you might say, “Doctor Joan at Acme Urgent Care has treated many of your co-workers and they’ve gotten better quickly.”

Selecting a doctor who doesn’t dispense drugs and only prescribes narcotics when they’re are absolutely necessary can go far to help injured employees get back to work and be healthy and productive as swiftly as possible – while keeping your Workers Comp costs under control.

If you held your last fire or emergency evacuation drill more than six months ago, it’s time to think about staging another. Careful planning and evaluation can help you get the most out of these exercises, enhancing your employee’s chances of a safe evacuation.

Bear in mind that unannounced drills give you an idea of how workers might actually react in an emergency situation. On the other hand, announcing drills offer them the opportunity to prepare for and practice specific skill sets they would need.

Before a fire emergency arises, workers need to know:

• How to activate the appropriate alarm system(s).
• How and when to contact the fire department.
• What to do before they evacuate—such as shutting down equipment.
• Their role in the evacuation. For example, they might need to assist disabled co-workers, help contractors or visitors on the premises, bring essential items such as visitor logs that can be used to verify that everyone is out of the building, provide first aid for injured co-workers, or act to prevent or minimize hazardous chemical releases.
• How to evacuate their work area by at least two routes.
• The locations of stairwells (workers should not use elevators to evacuate).
• Places to avoid – such as hazardous materials storage areas.
• Assembly points outside the building.

After the drill, evaluate the exercise to determine which problems need addressing. Ask such questions as:

• Did anyone ignore the alarm?
• Did everyone know what to do?
• Did everyone make it to the assembly point?
• How long did the evacuation take?
• Are there any gaps that need filling? For example, is at least one worker trained in first aid available on every shift?

If you’d like advice on implementing or reviewing your fire evacuation plans, our agency stands ready to help.

In the 18 states that permit using marijuana for medical purposes, more and more injured employees are obtaining legal prescriptions for the drug to treat symptoms and conditions covered under Workers Compensation – which raises a number of issues:

For starters, the federal prohibition against using medical marijuana (MMJ) creates a clear conflict with state laws that can lead to lengthy litigation.

On the state level, Workers Comp regulations are silent about MMJ usage, and cases have been challenged with mixed results. says Jim Andrews, Executive Vice President of Pharmacy Services at Healthcare Solutions, an Atlanta-based medical cost management company, For example, when an Arizona man who smoked marijuana as a recreational drug filed a request for opioids to reduce pain from a work-related injury, his insurance company convinced state regulators to rule against providing coverage on the grounds that using opioids and marijuana together is medically contraindicated.

Because MMJ is a relatively new treatment for on-the-job injuries, there’s little data on whether it’s safe, helpful, or medically appropriate. According to Andrews, “We might find that the downside of MMJ will be demonstrated long after the public starts using it.” He recommends giving injured workers urine tests to make sure that they’re using MMJ and other medications as prescribed. If their test results don’t confirm this, there’s a strong case that they didn’t need the drugs in the first place.

As using IMMJ to help alleviate work-related injuries becomes more widespread, insurance companies will be working with pharmacists to and monitor packaging (i.e., providing childproof containers) and product quality – and to standardize reimbursement.

To learn more about this complex issue, please feel free to get in touch with us.

A study commissioned by the British government found that for every lost-time injury of more than three days, there were 189 non-injury cases. No business can afford to ignore these near misses, which provide invaluable opportunities to identify and correct safety hazards on the job before they lead to accidents or injuries.

However, according to an article in the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) journal, employees often resist reporting these close calls for such reasons as fear of management retaliation, peer pressure, concern about a safety record, complicated reporting forms and lack of feedback.

To encourage employee reporting of near misses in the workplace, experts recommend these guidelines:

1. Provide your employees with safety training.
2. Develop strategies to measure how reporting near misses improves safety performance.
3. Recognize and reward employees for proactive safety engagement.
4. Have your safety committee oversee the reporting process.
5. Provide incident investigations training for all managers that includes mentoring help for new staff members.
6. Investigate everything! The time you spend investigating near misses will yield long-term rewards by eliminating the time, expense, and hassle of dealing with major (possibly fatal) injuries or property loss – not to mention the impact on productivity and workplace morale.
7. Conduct comprehensive follow-up on corrective action plans. Ask who, what, and by when – and make sure that these changes are made.
8. Report on all investigations. Making sure that every employee hears about every near miss will encourage reporting of future incidents, as workers realize that speaking out will help them do their work more safely.

Our agency’s specialists would be happy to provide their advice on encouraging your employees to help keep their workplace safe. Just give us a call.