Bloomfield health insurer Cigna Inc. says its customers’ use of prescribed opioids has declined nearly 12 percent in the past year – about halfway to achieving the company’s goal of 25 percent reduction by 2019.
Cigna has been working with doctors in its Cigna Collaborative Care arrangements to reduce opioid prescriptions in an effort to fight the nation’s opioid epidemic. So far, 158 medical groups in the arrangments, representing nearly 62,000 doctors, have signed Cigna’s pledge to reduce opioid prescribing and to treat opioid use disorder as a chronic condition.
Cigna assists doctors in preventing, recognizing and treating opioid misuse.
Additionally, effective July 1, most new prescriptions for a long-acting opioid that are not used as part of treatment for cancer or sickle cell disease, or for hospice care, will be subject to prior authorization, and most new prescriptions for a short-acting opioid will be subject to quantity limits.
“As a country, we have developed an over-reliance on opioids to manage pain,” Cigna President/CEO David Cordani said in a news release. “If we’re going to break the opioid epidemic, we need to change that culture. Helping doctors become more aware of their own prescribing patterns and the effectiveness of non-narcotic alternatives for pain management is key to helping our customers have better health outcomes. …”
Cigna continues to work closely with Shatterproof, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the devastation that addiction causes to families and the stigma associated with this disease.
A Cigna Foundation grant helped the organization launch an online portal earlier this year that has up-to-date, evidence-based information on how to understand, prevent, intervene, treat, and recover from substance use disorders.
