Health benefits spur drug rings on shop floor

Some factory owners are finding that their shop floors are home to drug rings — with the companies themselves as the suppliers.

The combination of generous health benefits and the national opioid crisis has made manufacturers prime targets for sales of the addictive drugs. More and more, companies are finding that investigations of workers' compensation scams turn into drug investigations.

It's a tricky problem to root out because plenty of employees are prescribed the drugs legitimately. Some have questioned whether the drugs are keeping people out of the labor force, but according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, roughly two-thirds of people who use prescribed pain medications are employed.

Based on National Center for Health Statistics figures, opioid painkillers such as OxyContin and Percocet were involved in about 14,400 overdose deaths in 2016, while nonmethadone synthetic opioids such as fentanyl were linked to more than 20,100 overdose deaths.

The crisis is costly, particularly for businesses. Opioid misusers cost employers nearly twice as much annually in health care, $19,450 vs. $10,853 for those who don't misuse the drugs, according to the 2016 report by Castlight Health.

Nexteer Automotive Corp., which makes steering columns, electronics and systems, discovered a problem when looking at its costs.

Prescription costs for painkillers for employees on Nexteer's health insurance at its mid-Michigan plant skyrocketed "several hundred thousand dollars" in 2015, said Tony Behrman, general director of human resources. And the company had no idea why. There had been no dramatic increases in workers' compensation claims or changes in the company's health plan.

"With 4,000 people, we're talking about probably a $500 per head increase for these types of prescriptions alone; the pills aren't that expensive," Behrman said. "The spike didn't make any logical sense to me."

After a yearlong investigation, Behrman found that Nexteer's generous prescription benefits made it a prime target for drug pushers and abusers. Nexteer turned to Pinkerton, a corporate security and risk management company, which placed an undercover agent on Nexteer's factory floor to investigate.

"They told us we were a prime target for people to deal," Behrman said. "We're the largest employer in town with the best benefits. They called us a 'target-rich environment.' "

A production worker at Nexteer enjoys wages roughly 33 percent higher than the county's median hourly wage, for example.

Within the first hours of the agent's first shift, the agent was approached to buy prescription opioids. For Pinkerton, this is the new normal, said Eric Rose, Midwest region managing director. Opioid investigations have overtaken internal theft investigations in the past 18 months, Rose said.

"We're seeing it over and over again. A guy will fall off a forklift and will get a script for 50 Percocets," Rose said. "We recently had a case where six employees would alternate injuries to get scripts filled and supply each other. Two of the six then started selling [the pills] on the side. The employer was paying out workers' comp and paying for the medication. The employer becomes the source."

At Nexteer, the investigation led to the firing of six employees and switching from a fully insured health plan to a self-insured plan, Behrman said.

"Indications are that [opioid use] has been curbed somewhat, but we're not totally sure until we see this year's costs," he said.

But the crisis is only going to get worse until more employers take action, Behrman said.

"I think it's getting by almost everybody; it got by me and I've been in HR a long time," he said. "As long as people are able to get so many pills and companies are paying for them, we'll never solve this problem."

At Nexteer, drug screening is a growing concern, as many employees taking opioids do so at the direction of their doctor and are not misusing the painkillers, Behrman said.

Behrman said his research revealed that many of Nexteer's peers have eliminated screening for marijuana as medicinal use, and even recreational use, becomes more normalized. He said he is reviewing whether Nexteer will relax its drug screening procedures in a way that won't jeopardize its plant operations and still open employment to more workers.