My mother gave up custody of me when I was 18 months old. Before that, she was a nurse working in a hospital. While lifting a patient, she injured her back. Through workers’ compensation, she was referred to an orthopedist. Surgery was recommended. A spinal fusion followed. Chronic pain followed that. Then came OxyContin. She became addicted.
That sequence, while devastating, is also disturbingly ordinary. I’ve now spent years working with employers, brokers and providers across the country, serving thousands of employees. The longer I do this work, the easier it becomes to talk about musculoskeletal spend (MSK) in the abstract: claims data, trend lines, renewal pressure, utilization management. These numbers have a way of sanding down the reality that real humans are behind them.
