Orchid Medical Urinary Drug Testing Service Strikes Alliance to Curb Prescription Drug Abuse

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Orchid Medical, a national leader in ancillary healthcare services for workers’ compensation, has extended its Urinary Drug Testing (UDT) program to include an alliance to help curb prescription drug abuse, curtail death rates from unintentional overdose of opioid analgesics, and reduce claim costs.

“Making sure medications are prescribed and dispensed appropriately and at a contracted price, substantially below fee schedule, is part and parcel of the CPS program”

By aligning its UDT services to two national companies with drug addiction intervention, treatment and prescription drug management programs, Orchid Medical offers payers, and injured workers in medical treatment for pain a facilitated access to services that impact inappropriate use of opioids.

The alliance, comprised of Orchid Medical, Workers’ Addiction Management and Corporate Pharmacy Services, provides a complete solution to helping curtail addiction. Working in collaboration, they are able to take a case from identification and treatment to managing the risk of drug addiction, while helping insurance carriers, TPAs and employers contain costs related to medical treatment of injured workers who are being prescribed potentially addictive pain medication.

“Everybody talks about the problem of prescription drug addiction, the related cost, and, worst of all, fatal overdose,” said Oliver Ostlander, Orchid Medical Chief Information Officer. “This collaboration contributes to the solution.”

Orchid Medical’s UDT includes a fixed-rate urinary drug testing and re-testing program per occurrence with certified labs that identify cases at high risk for drug addiction. With the alliance, payers have the option to involve Workers Addiction Management, if appropriate, to provide the injured worker with services such as early intervention program, case management, prescription drug monitoring, detox and rehabilitation.

“After at-risk patients are identified, physician peer-to-peer intervention can take place,” said Stacey Whidden, Chief Executive Officer of Workers Addiction Management. “The process involves thoughtful peer to peer discussion focused on weaning or discontinuing dangerously high levels of narcotic and other potentially fatal drugs.”

Corporate Pharmacy Services (CPS) completes the alliance by providing payers the option to engage pharmacy benefit management services. “Managing pharmacy costs is integral to lowering the overall cost of the claim,” said Greg Roberts, President and CEO of Corporate Pharmacy Services. “Making sure medications are prescribed and dispensed appropriately and at a contracted price, substantially below fee schedule, is part and parcel of the CPS program”.

With a network of over 64,000 retail pharmacies, CPS has direct contracts that allow real-time claims processing and electronic review of prescriptions while its wholly-owned mail order pharmacy provides deep discounts on maintenance medications. “With the use of our proprietary Blue Diamond Software, adjusters and nurse case managers have the ability to literally manage their pharmacy program from their desktops,” Roberts said.

Orchid Medical

Founded in 2002, Orlando-based Orchid Medical is a nationwide ancillary healthcare service company specializing in workers' compensation. Its high level of efficiency and standards of quality care solutions expedite successful outcomes for injured workers. www.orchidmedical.com