Injured Workers Pharmacy Blog

Mental health coverage in workers’ comp has been a topic of conversation across the country for several years.  Last year, IWP published a white paper, Mental Health Coverage for First Responders, exploring the various approaches to mental health coverage in workers’ compensation across the country, including the success stories and the failures. 

After being injured on the job, many workers face a complicated workers’ compensation system.  From filing a claim to obtaining proper medical treatment, there are significant opportunities for an injured worker to face obstacles.  One often talked about is retaliation.

In a typical week, practitioners treat over 90 patients through in-office, home care, or telemedicine encounters. In addition to practicing medicine, many practitioners are spending their day charting, building their practice, or attending to administrative needs.

Approximately 90% of job-related injuries are first time occurrences, which means if you have never been injured on the job you may have several misconceptions about how the workers’ compensation system works.

Earlier this year, after a contentious legislative fight, the Pennsylvania legislature passed SB 936, a bill aimed at creating a workers’ comp drug formulary in the state. Getting the bill passed was a struggle.  Insurers and employers pushed hard for its passage, but labor and Democrats were strongly opposed. 

What happens after you’ve been injured on the job? The question might be a simple one, but the answer is a lot more complex. Your state, employer, and even your type of injury can play a role in your experience within the workers’ comp system.

What would injured workers do without workers’ compensation? Unless you have money readily available to pay for injury-related medical bills and support yourself while you recover outside of work, you may have had to sue your employer and prove that they were at fault for causing your injury. 

If you visit a healthcare provider frequently, you may have heard the term “value-based care”, or VBC. In a basic sense, value-based care is a model that pays a healthcare provider based on the patient’s health outcome. This means providers are incentivized to provide better, more effective care in exchange for payment. As the phrase goes, VBC would be quality over quantity.

Filling your workers’ comp prescriptions at a local retail pharmacy can be a hassle. Workers’ comp, which is a different type of insurance than your personal health plan, requires a few extra steps that retail pharmacies may not be equipped to handle.

Towns, states, and the entire country are struggling with the current opioid epidemic and how to address it. Some states and counties have created various initiatives to help reduce opioid abuse including dosage limits, expanded access to Narcan, and prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) requirements.  Ohio is one of those states tackling the opioid epidemic head-on, including their strides within the state’s workers’ comp system.