Opioid Policy Change

Daniel J. Loepp

| 3 min read

Daniel J. Loepp is President and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. Mr. Loepp has directed sweeping initiatives and innovations that have led to a historic transformation of BCBSM and health care in Michigan. He played a major role in modernizing the state’s health care delivery system in a process that led to enactment of new laws that transformed BCBSM to become a nonprofit mutual insurance company in January 2014. Mr. Loepp has led BCBSM initiatives to improve health care quality and slow cost increases, saving nearly $1.5 billion through several programs that have garnered national attention and served as models implemented across the country. Under his leadership, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is helping to revitalize and strengthen Detroit, Grand Rapids and Lansing. In 2011 and 2012, Blue Cross moved 3,000 BCBSM employees into downtown Detroit and the company is one of the largest employers in the city’s Central Business District. In Lansing, BCBSM subsidiary AF Group transformed a long abandoned power plant into a national headquarters. Mr. Loepp has stood by a commitment that BCBSM should be a driving force for good in Michigan’s core cities. It is reflected in BCBSM’s workforce diversity and inclusion efforts, supplier partnerships and community initiatives. In his tenure, BCBSM has been named Corporation of the Year in Finance and Insurance Services nine times by the Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council. The company has also been named one of America’s Top Organizations for Multi-Cultural Business Opportunities by DiversityBusiness.com and ranked five consecutive years as one of the top 10 Regional Companies for diversity by DiversityInc magazine, including being ranked No. 1 for consecutive years in 2015 and 2016. Mr. Loepp was honored as a 2016 recipient of the Edward N. McNamara Goodfellow of the Year Award. He was selected as Michiganian of the Year by The Detroit News in 2013. Mr. Loepp joined Blue Cross in 2000. In 2011, 2012 and 2013, he served as board chair of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), an organization that includes all 36 Blue Cross plans and provides health coverage to more than 106 million Americans.

This week, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan announced an important policy change, more strongly regulating opioid prescriptions as part of our ongoing efforts to address the devastating opioid addiction crisis gripping our nation. Starting Feb. 1, 2018, BCBSM will be working with physicians to limit patients who are new to opioid therapy and receiving a short-acting opioid to a five-day supply for their first prescription fill. Subsequent prescriptions and refills will be limited to a 30-day supply. This common sense step will help our members get the pain management medication their doctors believe is needed, while taking positive steps to address a growing epidemic of addiction and overdose deaths that is widely acknowledged as a national crisis. The statistics on opioid abuse are alarming, and the problem has been growing, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nationally, 91 people die each day from opioid abuse. Since 1999, the number of Michigan deaths from opioid overdoses jumped more than 17 times. Last year alone, more people in our state died of drug overdoses - 2,335 - than in car accidents. Prescription opioids are an effective pain relief treatment. But they can also be deadly when combined with other medications. They can be highly addictive when taken in higher doses than prescribed, or for longer than medically necessary. Opioids can immediately impact some people in a very negative way. Abuse of opioids by people who become addicted can also lead to the use of lethal street opioids, such as heroin and illegally-produced fentanyl. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, along with other Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans across the nation, is working to combat the opioid epidemic by enhancing awareness, and through partnerships with physicians and public health advocates and officials. Our employees are working on several strategic initiatives to prevent overdose deaths, including:
  • Working directly with doctors to coordinate care to reduce opioid abuse and overdose from prescriptions for controlled substances from multiple doctors without their shared knowledge of prescriptions from others.
  • Creation of the Opioids Provider Toolkit, which provides physician organizations links to best practices and resources, tips to safely manage pain, and information on available data and resources on opioid use.
  • Development of awareness programs about deadly drug interactions from certain regimens with no legitimate medical rationale.
  • Coordination of drug usage reviews and research alert physicians before patients take a combination of opioids and other medications that can lead to fatal overdose. After six months of working with doctors, we’ve seen a nearly 51 percent reduction in Blue Cross members taking both opioid and BZD drugs.
  • Limiting opioid prescriptions to a 30-day supply, and restricting short-acting opioids to five days on initial prescriptions.
Our new policy changes represent one more proactive step in our ongoing efforts to provide quality care for our members, and most importantly, improve health. But these steps are just the beginning. Doctors, insurers, advocates, government and researchers must find ways to work together to address this national public health emergency affecting far too many Americans and their families. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is committed to doing our part by putting our resources and expertise to work preventing the scourge of opioid addiction from taking more lives.

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4 Comments

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Blues Perspectives

Feb 23, 2018 at 2:22am

Hi April, If you have any questions about your coverage, we’d be happy to assist. Provide some additional details here, http://miblues.co/1Bb6oI4, and a member of our team will reach out to you directly. Thanks, Taylar

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April Buck

Feb 22, 2018 at 1:02pm

Does the policy for the change in quantities that are able to be prescribed go into effect on 2/1/18?

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Blues Perspectives

Dec 28, 2017 at 2:03am

Hi Rachel, Thanks for reaching out. The statistic referenced in this post also came from the CDC and is related to the number of deaths per day related to opioid overdoses in the US in 2015. You can read the findings we referenced here: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html Let us know if you have any other questions. Best, Taylar

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Rachel

Dec 27, 2017 at 5:15pm

I'm doing a lot of work on prescription drug abuse prevention in Montana this year. Being both from Michigan and in this field, as well as a client of BCBS of MI, hearing this makes me so happy. Thank you for putting the safety of Americans at the forefront of your work. I do have one question, though. I have seen CDC data that says that 144 people die nationally on a daily basis from opioid overdose, so I was wondering where you got the 91 statistic. Thank you for your help!

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