SEPTEMBER 14, 2018

Did Insurers’ Policies Fuel the Opioid Epidemic?

Insurers’ policies for chronic pain medications are missing important opportunities to steer patients to safer and more effective treatments than opioids, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The study found that many insurers failed to apply evidence-based “utilization management” rules to discourage opioid overuse, and many rules were applied as often to nonopioids as opioids.