The pain of deprescribing opioids in workers’ comp
Long-term opioid use is common in workers’ compensation, and far harder to unwind than to start. A focus on early intervention, independent oversight and tailored deprescribing is opening the door to better outcomes for patients.
At the 2025 PIEF Conference, Luke McGrath, Director and Pharmacist and Independent Medical Management (IMM) and co-founder of allmeds.ai and Luke Ogilvie, Wellbeing Specialist at Suncorp, discussed what happens when opioids prescribed for short-term relief quietly turn into long-term problems — and what schemes can do about it. Their message was that opioids in workers’ compensation are not just a clinical issue. They are a recovery ...