Purdue Pharma LP and the Sackler family will pay $270 million to settle Oklahoma’s claims that illegal marketing of the Oxycontin painkiller devastated local communities, an accord that could influence the results of thousands of lawsuits faced by the company …
Some physicians are pushing back against “widespread misapplication” of the 2016 federal opioid prescribing guidelines, while a new report from Harvard Medical School researchers gives some credence to their claims. Some 300 health professionals signed a joint letter to the …
Employees at a drug company accused of bribing doctors rapped and danced around a person dressed as a bottle of the highly addictive fentanyl spray in a video meant to motivate sales reps into getting patients on higher doses. The …
A 15th wrongful-death lawsuit has been filed against an Ohio hospital system and a now-fired intensive care doctor who’s under investigation for ordering possibly fatal pain medication doses for dozens of patients. Many of the lawsuits allege patients in the …
A new approach to defining opioid-related auto fatalities provides insight into the nature and distribution of opioid-involved deaths in the state of Maryland, say the authors of a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of …
A study from the California Workers’ Compensation Institute shows the likelihood that indemnity was paid on a workers’ comp claim increased with the number of concurrent prescriptions the injured worker was on. Concurrent use of multiple medications to treat one …
A major source of the opioid crisis is overprescribing by well-meaning doctors who want to relieve patients’ pain, but are insufficiently focused on the risks. Could behavioral economics help change that — and save lives? Almost 2 million Americans are …
The culture of clinicians treating pain as a fifth vital sign, targeting pain-free living through a prescription regimen, is acknowledged as a driving factor behind the rise of opioid addiction. The American Society of Addiction Medicine found 4 in 5 …
A national medical group Thursday abruptly canceled its plans to train doctors about marijuana for pain relief after a federal agency pulled its funding. The episode highlights an ongoing conflict between federal and state laws on marijuana. The American Academy …
State Compensation Insurance Fund, California’s stable provider of workers’ compensation insurance, reported that it had significantly reduced the number of opioid prescriptions for injured workers by 60 percent since launching its opioid-reduction program in 2014. State Fund implemented a comprehensive …