The 12^th Annual Survey of Prescription Drug Management from CompPharma is out and the results show that comp payers are increasing what they spend on prescription drugs since last year’s survey showed a decrease.

Overall in 2014, payers saw a 6.4 percent increase in drug cost even though 2013’s report indicated a 3.8 percent decrease. This is the first increase in five years, and the source of the increase is attributed to increased prescriptions from doctors and the widespread use of opioids. Though the overall trend saw costs increase, only seven of the 21 survey respondents said they experienced increases in their drug spend and there was a wide cost range amongst those seven. Some survey respondents said they were worried that the Food and Drug Administration seems to be willing to make opioids even more available than they already are.

Other issues like compound medications and aggressive physician dispensing were issues in the survey as well. Payers fear that doctors are all too ready to write or dispense prescriptions that may not be in the patient’s best interest, and physician dispensed prescriptions are often much more expensive than pharmacy prescriptions. Another problem with this practice is that often a patient is seeing multiple doctors for their work injury and each of those doctors can write them prescriptions without knowing what another doctor is prescribing to them.

About three-fourths of survey respondents said they have or will start to implement a drug testing program, up from half of respondents.

Prescription drugs costs account for one out of six medical dollars spent and show no signs of slowing down, though they certainly can slow down a patient’s recovery time. The encouraging news is that the industry knows they have a serious problem on their hands, with costs increasing and opioid abuse on the rise, but knowing about the problem does not mean it is easily solved.