Moderator: Greg Hamlin, Director of Claims, Kentucky Employers’ Mutual Insurance

CE Certified By: AMA,AAFP,ANCC,NASW

This session features two presentations to inform the workers’ compensation industry in its responses to the opioid epidemic.

The Workers Compensation Research Institute will present its latest findings on interstate variations and trends in opioid use among injured workers across 26 state workers compensation systems. The presentation will explore how often injured workers across these states received opioids on a chronic basis, at daily doses exceeding guideline recommendations, and concomitantly with other sedating drugs such as benzodiazepines. These high-risk utilization patterns may be potential markers of likelihood of physician dependence, addiction and overdose deaths. The presentation also will highlight injury, worker and employer characteristics associated with higher opioid utilization.

Specifically for patients who have undergone work-related injury, it is important to consider the unique characteristics, challenges and risks inherent to workers’ comp populations. Presenters will explain how aggregation and transformation of big data into smart data — combined with systematically applied innovative clinical logic — can reduce drug therapy risks, expose gaps in care and present stakeholders with a complete view of relevant information about their injured workers, dramatically increasing awareness and helping them act on what matters. Attendees will learn how clinical and business intelligence and data strategies can be applied to support the challenges of population health management and its role in improving the care and safety of injured workers.

UPON COMPLETION OF THIS COURSE, PARTICIPANTS WILL BE ABLE TO:
- Identify which state workers’ compensation jurisdictions had higher or lower opioid utilization and higher prevalence of high-risk utilization patterns.
- Identify states where opioid use among injured workers decreased in the early part of this decade and discuss the policy context in which these changes occurred.
- Distinguish how opioid utilization varies by different injury, worker and employer characteristics.
- Define key attributes in the workers’ comp population, e.g, risk factors, conditions and gaps in care.
- Explain how to tailor and apply practical strategies that will improve care delivery in the population.
- Recognize how analytics can drive population health strategy to support data-driven decision-making.