🔒Opioid scourge puts employers in crosshairs

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By now, it's no secret the opioid epidemic is wreaking havoc on individuals and families across Connecticut.

The abuse of prescription painkillers and heroin (especially heroin that contains fentanyl) has fueled an increasing number of accidental overdoses in the state.

In 2012, 357 Connecticut residents died from an accidental overdose. Last year, there were 916 deaths. Of that number, nearly 60 percent had some level of heroin, morphine or codeine detected in their systems, according to a grim tally kept by the Chief Medical Examiner's Office.

In addition, thousands of other state residents are battling their addictions daily, some seeking professional help, while others try to hide their drug use in plain sight.

Increasingly, too, the opioid epidemic's impact is washing up on employers' doorsteps, posing social and financial challenges and sometimes even safety risks.

The Wall Street Journal last year, analyzing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), pegged the opioid epidemic's total financial cost to the U.S. at $78.5 billion, including $16.3 billion in lost worker productivity and higher disability, and $14 billion borne by health insurers. In a 2011 article in the journal Pain Medicine, a team of health economists tabulated the total workplace costs of prescription opioid abuse at $25.6 billion.

Meantime, a recent National Safety Council survey of 501 U.S. employers with 50 or more workers found that more than 70 percent believed they had been impacted by prescription drug abuse, mainly from worker absenteeism, substance use at work, positive drug tests and decreased performance.

“Employers must understand that the most dangerously misused drug today may be sitting in employees' medicine cabinets,” said National Safety Council President/CEO Deborah Hersman. “Even when they are taken as prescribed, prescription drugs ... can impair workers and create hazards on the job. We hope these findings prompt employers to take the lead on this emerging issue so that workplaces can be as safe as possible.”

The opioid epidemic's impact is reaching into both blue- and white-collar industries, although physically demanding sectors like construction and manufacturing remain at higher risk. Impaired employees are less productive and are more likely to cause accidents, which can be particularly devastating when vehicles and heavy equipment are involved. Such accidents can also drive up worker's compensation insurance costs.

Addicts also have higher health insurance costs. According to a recent claims analysis by Castlight, medical costs for prescription drug abusers are approximately double those of non-abusers. Firing a drug abuser and then hiring and training a new worker is also costly.

“I think a lot of times addicts have a stigma about them that they are less valuable than other members of society, but the reality is most of the addicts in our society are just like you and I,” said Connie Tynan, who heads human resources for Torrington-based general contractor C.H. Nickerson (a proactive company readers will meet later in this series). “They just happen to be injured, or some circumstance in their life opened a door to them, and unfortunately their bodies took over.”

Proactive employers have been revamping their drug-testing policies, beefing up employee assistance programs and offering other ways to help suspected drug abusers.

State government has tried to do its part as well. In the last few years, Connecticut lawmakers have: required doctors and pharmacies to connect to a prescription monitoring program; made overdose reversal injections available to first responders, friends and family members of addicts; and limited opioid prescriptions to certain patients to a seven-day supply.

Most opioid data lags by several years, but the efforts may be having an impact. According to a recent study from the CDC, per-capita opioid prescription rates fell 18 percent from 2010 to 2015, but they were still three times higher than in 1999.

In Connecticut, seven of eight counties saw a decrease over that time, though opioid prescriptions in five of eight counties were higher than the national average.

While the data may signal good news, it only reduces the availability of legally prescribed pills, not relatively cheap and plentiful heroin.

“We have not seen a decrease in overdose deaths,” said Patricia Rehmer, president of Hartford HealthCare's Behavioral Health Network. “So there's a mismatch.”

Researchers have noted an increasing incidence of heroin users who report that they first abused opioid pain relievers, so tightening the pill supply could lead to fewer heroin users in the long run.

View all stories in the "Opioid in the Workplace" series.