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Opioids and repackaged medications will be the focus of state lawmakers during an upcoming national meeting. Committees in the National Council of Insurance Legislators will look at model laws for states to adopt.

Employers covered under the federal OSHA injury and illness recordkeeping and posting requirements have until April 30 to post their OSHA 300A logs.

Efforts to keep workers warm may result in carbon monoxide poisoning. Federal authorities are warning employers to be especially vigilant about protecting workers during the colder months.

California's workers' comp system could see savings of $57.2 million by allowing third-party payer access to its prescription drug monitoring program, suggests a new report.

People in Missouri may be hired more quickly if the prospective employer can look online to see if there is a history of filing workers' comp claims. That's the idea behind a proposed online database for businesses.

A shift in focus from treating the loss of function to relieving pain explains much of the cost differences for workers' comp claims more than 20 years old, according to new research.

"Carpal tunnel injury claims are among the most expensive work injury claims in California, with higher than average indemnity and medical payments," says a new report. They typically involve "not only high medical costs, but long periods of recuperation and permanent disability, which push up indemnity costs."

Health care providers unfamiliar with handling work-related injuries have a new resource. The New Clinicians Web page from OSHA is aimed at helping clinicians understand the requirements and procedures in dealing with such cases.

The Workers' Compensation Commission issued a memorandum stating that the Insurance Compliance Division will no longer accept requests for certificates of non-insurance.

Workers newly hired in poultry plants may be more susceptible to a particular type of infection, suggests a new study.

Nearly every state is reporting widespread geographic influenza with outbreaks 10 times higher than at this time last year. Federal researchers are looking more closely into the transmission of flu with an eye toward better prevention techniques.

"Effective use of opioids must result in clinically meaningful improvement in function," says the Washington Department of Labor and Industries. "Continuing to prescribe opioids in the absence of clinically meaningful improvement in function or after the development of a severe adverse outcome is not proper and necessary care in the Washington state workers' compensation system."

Are workers' comp practitioners by and large using social media to improve the industry? It's a question several industry insiders hope to answer through a pair of surveys.

The latest Site-specific Targeting program has been released. Along with inspections of industries deemed to have high rates of injuries and illnesses, OSHA is conducting a study to gain insight into the effectiveness of the program.

A worker removing snow from a rooftop slid off, hit his head on construction materials being stored below the roof, and died. Another worker was laying grid lines and shoveling snow from a second-floor deck when he fell through an elevator shaft opening that was covered with a plastic tarp and temporary guardrails installed around only a portion of the shaft opening. A third worker fell from the roof of a residential construction site as he was shoveling snow and was fatally impaled by a scaffold upright in the course of his fall.