Working with their pharmacy benefit managers, payers cut one of every six dollars in opioid spend, which the report called a "truly remarkable result." In contrast, across all payer types, pain medication use declined by a scant 1 percent (Quintiles IMS).
"Clearly the efforts of workers' comp regulators, payers, desk-level staff, PBMs and prescribers have paid off," said Joseph Paduda, president of CompPharma, LLC. "While we have much left to do, this represents a dramatic improvement in the lives of thousands of patients."
Payers are far from complacent, with all respondents expressing grave concerns about the risk of opioid addiction or dependency. Most are continuing to refine and improve programs to help patients address pain while minimizing use of opioids, relying on physician and/or pharmacist review of claims, early identification of potentially risky prescribing, and increased use of drug testing.
In contrast, compound drug utilization and spend has dropped dramatically and is no longer of great concern to payers.
A complimentary copy of the 2016 survey can be downloaded from https://tinyurl.com/CP2017RxSurvey.
About CompPharma
Established by industry consultants Joseph Paduda and Helen King Patterson, CompPharma, LLC is a consortium of workers' compensation PBMs active in workers compensation. More information is available at www.comppharma.com or by contacting Patterson at 813-690-4787 or hpatterson@comppharma.com.