A Wake Up Call for Employers: One-Third of Opioid Scripts Are Being Abused

Castlight, a health benefits platform provider focused on self-insured employers, published a report last week on the opioid crisis.  The authors were able to take a unique look at the problem through the lens of current data from self-insured employer clients (vs. latent data from public sources).

Lots of interesting data in the report, but here's the headline:

1 out of every 3 opioid prescriptions is being abused.   

I had three reactions, in the following order:

First, I knew that number would seem astronomically large to most people ("Seriously, one-third of all opioid scripts are being abused?  How can that be?")  Fact is there are more sad opioid statistics than most people realize.  It is the disease of not listening.  While it makes for admittedly depressing cocktail party conversation, it is a predictable interchange.  People know there's an issue... they just don't realize how broad and deep it goes.

Second, I personally thought that number seemed low.  While I recognize PRIUM's data is somewhat skewed by our focus on chronic and sub-acute pain (vs. acute pain), our physician consultants conclude that approximately 70% of the the medications we review are not medically necessary based on evidence based guidelines.  I recognize that "lack of medical necessity" and "abuse" are two different phenomenon, but when it comes to opioids specifically, the former tends to lead to the latter. So I thought 1/3 was low.

And that led me to my third reaction: How did Castlight define "abuse"?  They're looking at de-identified diagnosis and prescription data.  I wondered what methodology they used to identify opioid abuse.

Page 12 of the report details their approach:
Excluding cancer diagnoses and hospice care, Castlight defined abuse as meeting both of the following conditions:

1. Receiving greater than a cumulative 90-day supply of opioids; AND
2. Receiving an opioid prescription from four or more providers over the 5 year period between 2011 and 2015.  

Let's acknowledge that this is, at best, a proxy for abuse.  Might there be patients who are defined as "abusers" in the Castlight data who are not, in fact, opioid abusers?  Is it possible that a patient could receive opioid scripts from 4 or more docs over 5 years and not be an abuser?  Of course it's possible.  

But I think the Castlight approach is actually quite conservative.  Using a cut off of 4 prescribers likely leaves out a material number of patients who are abusing opioids but happen to secure their prescriptions regularly from as few as a single provider.  By the way, Castlight doesn't capture work comp data.  So we know (unfortunately) that 1/3 statistic is low.  

A wake up call for self-insured employers?  Hopefully. 

Michael 

On Twitter @PRIUM1

When CMS and CDC Conflict: Medicare and Opioids

A few weeks back, the National Alliance of Medicare Set-Aside Professionals (NAMSAP) published a press release calling for a revised approach to MSAs that include opioid medications.  Specifically, NAMSAP stated that it supports the following changes:

1. A hard cap of 90 MED based on the CDC guidelines for no more than one month when the Work Comp MSA includes a surgical projection; and/or,
2. A hard cap of 40 MED for no more than one month, followed by a 10% per week mandatory tapering and weaning plan, as recommended by the CDC, until fully weaned from opioids

I find this attempt at hoisting the federal government with its own petard laudable.  When the federal government's public health agency says one thing, but that same government's healthcare payment policy agency says another, they ought to be called to account for it.  Just about anyone who reads this blog with any regularity is familiar with the crushing clinical and financial burden of opioids in general, but also specifically in regard to MSAs.  Long term use of expensive and potentially addictive medication is driving huge pharmacy allocations and prohibiting settlements.  So good for NAMSAP for putting this issue front and center with more than just a tired complaint, but rather with a specific call to action.  Good stuff.

Only one small problem.  I don't think it has a chance at being implemented. 

There are plenty of smart people in our industry that have forgotten more about MSAs than I will ever know.  But if I were writing the CMS response to NAMSAP, I would probably write: “We recognize that some of the treatment for which we demand allocation is outside of evidence based guidelines.  We support any and all efforts to bring care for these injured workers within those guidelines.  However, we respect the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship and should a projection include long term use of opioids above the evidence based threshold, CMS will still demand an appropriate allocation for those medications.”  

I think the NAMSAP idea is fantastic - it should start a necessary dialogue around conflicting federal government policies and the clinical and financial risks it creates for patients and payers.  But I believe it has little hope of changing CMS policy, at least in the short term.  Hasn't CMS historically deferred to the treating physician’s approach, even when it makes no sense? 

One might argue that this is different, people are dying of opioid overdoses and the Medicare eligible population is not immune from that phenomenon.

I hope I'm wrong.  

Michael 

Follw me on Twitter @PRIUM1

Economic Insecurity and Chronic Pain

Earlier this year, the estimable industry consultant Peter Rousmaniere published a report entitled The Uncompensated Worker: Financial Impact of Work Comp on Households.  In the report, Peter summarizes the realistic impact that workers compensation has on families: "The scenarios [explored in the report] show that a brief work disability often results in a sharp cut in take-home pay, after the deductibles are applied. An extended disability lasting for months can cause many injured workers to struggle to meet their household expenses, forcing these employees to dig into their savings and risk losing their financial cushion."

And in an article last week published on Insurance Business America, Mark Walls, Vice President of Communications and Strategic Analysis at Safety National, noted the economic anachronism that is our current work comp system.  "Today, there are lots of skilled craftspeople who earn more than that [an indemnity cap of $1,100/week].  For anyone who earns a good living, going on workers comp can be a devastating blow, when it should not be."

While the world certainly affords no law to make an injured worker rich, our current system doesn't even appear to allow some injured workers to avoid poverty.  These two pieces came to mind when I saw this headline recently in the Harvard Business Review: The Link Between Income Inequality and Physical Pain.  Researchers from UVA and Columbia hypothesized that there might be a link between fiscal pain and physical pain.

First, they looked at the consumption patters of over-the-counter painkillers among 33,000 US households.  Compared to households in which at least one head of household was employed, those in which both were unemployed exhibited 20% higher spend on OTC painkillers.  Next, researchers asked people how much physical pain they were currently experiencing, but did so after informing the respondent of the unemployment rate in his or her state.  Employment status again proved to be a predictor of physical pain levels and, interestingly, simply living in a state with a high unemployment rate appears to lead to higher reports of physical pain.  They also did a fun experiment involving undergraduates and buckets of ice water, but you can read the article see how that went.

The researchers sum up their findings across studies as follows: "When people encounter economic insecurity, they typically feel a lost of control.  A sense of control is one of the foundational elements of well-being.  When people lose their sense of control, their body goes a bit haywire and responds to stimuli differently - displaying a weakened resilience and a lower pain threshold."

So here's an existential question for you this Monday morning: Might the very system we've devised to address pain resulting from workplace injury actually induce pain instead?  

Michael
On Twitter @PRIUM1