Employers critical in opioid battle
Lack of personal protective equipment is easy to spot. Telemetry and cameras allow supervisors to identify reckless driving or poor operators. Bad attitudes make themselves apparent.
The costliest hazard in the American workplace, though, is almost invisible.
Drug abuse is hard to identify before an incident takes place. Addicts can slip through urinalysis programs. Employees will often suffer in silence, embarrassed and fearful that asking for help will cost them their jobs.
“This is one of the biggest problems facing our country today,” said Debbie Hersman, CEO of the National Safety Council, a nonprofit founded in 1913 and charged by Congress to promote safety at work and home. “This is a very widespread problem, but because of the stigma attached to addiction, it’s not something very many people talk about.”
Overdoses have surpassed auto accidents as the leading cause of unintentional injury deaths. One of 4 Americans is either addicted to opioids, knows someone who is addicted, or knows someone who has overdosed.
Opioid or drug use in the workplace has impacted operations at more than two-thirds of U.S. employers, according to the council’s polling.
Firing addicts does not solve the problem or help employers, Hersman warned. The answer is identifying workers who need help, permitting them to seek assistance and providing them an opportunity to get better.
“Addiction is a medical condition,” Hersman said. “With effective treatment, people can do really well. They can perform at a high level, and they are very valuable. If we can treat addiction the way we do heart disease or other medical conditions, it would really go a long way to treating the stigma.”
The council will make opioids in the workplace a significant theme at its annual meeting in
Houston from Oct. 20-26. The group will display a wall with thousands of small, white “pills,” each carved with a human face to represent those who have fatally overdosed.
The memorial, called “Prescribed to Death,” is meant to raise awareness. Most people who become heroin addicts today start out taking prescription pain pills, often given for workplace injuries.
The National Safety Council will also pass out stickers to go on insurance cards that encourage people to understand what their doctor is prescribing. One of 3 people don’t know they are taking opioids because they only know the brand names: Vicodin, Percocet and OxyContin, to name a few.
Polling shows that 7 out of 10 employers want to help, but they don’t know how, Hersman said. The council has developed online tools for employers to understand best practices and the potential cost to their business.
At a minimum, companies should train all employees to identify drug misuse, discuss the opioid epidemic, offer health insurance policies that cover effective treatment and allow employees to reveal their problem without negative consequences.
Workplace drug testing is also essential, but many tests don’t check for prescription drugs and will miss opioids.
Other parts of the country, notably the Midwest, appear to have a much worse opioid problem than Texas. State laws here blocked the creation of “pill mills” that over-prescribe opioids, and the Texas worker’s compensation program required preapproval before doctors could prescribe them.
Texas’ low rates, though, could be a mirage. Texas law gives doctors huge discretion in identifying a cause of death, and only 13 counties have a medical examiner who investigates accidental deaths. In the other 241 counties, a justice of the peace must order an autopsy and usually do not.
“I don’t think anybody is spared this issue. It is truly an epidemic,” said Dr. Ezekiel Fink, medical director of pain at Houston Methodist hospital. “I would urge the business community to participate in the issue, because it really crosses all segments of society.”
Fink recommends ensuring health plans cover pain treatments other than opioids, such as acupuncture or physical therapy. They should also cover medication-assisted treatment programs that have far greater success than abstention.
In other ways, Texas lags in public policy. State officials do not require insurers to cover the cost of naloxone, an emergency overdose medication.
That leaves employers on the front lines of fighting opioid addiction. For the good of your company and your employees, learn the best practices and offer medically-proven treatment programs. You will not only save a life, but you will likely earn your employees’ never-ending loyalty.