The Wall Street Journal reports that workplace injury is one of the main reasons doctors prescribe opioids, and dependence has become an expensive problem for those paying workers’ comp claims. Workers’ compensation payers spent $1.54 billion on opioids in 2015, or 13% of total U.S. spending on opioids, according to an analysis by CompPharma LLC.

Companies that handle claims for those injuries are trying new programs that push workers toward alternative pain treatments and that make it harder to get prescriptions for potentially addictive drugs – all intended to get people back to work without getting hooked, companies say.

Workers compensation brokers, insurers and administrators, such as Lockton Companies LLC., Liberty Mutual Group Inc. and Broadspire Services Inc. are using predictive algorithms and behavioral health screens to assess an individual’s risk for dependency, and steering some injured workers to alternate treatments such as over-the-counter drugs and mental-health counseling in lieu of prescription opioids. Such programs are aimed at preventing abuse, rather than treating it after the fact.

“We were not capturing opioids early enough. We were catching them once they were already at a high dosage,” said Jacob Lazarovic, chief medical officer of Broadspire, which administers workers comp claims for self-insured employers and insurers.

When an injured worker is first prescribed a drug like Fentanyl, Broadspire mails an opioid education packet to both patient and doctor, and tracks refills. Claims are reviewed after 10 weeks to check whether the patient is still taking opioids. Broadspire then works with the physician to make plans for weaning the patient off the drugs, he says.

In a test of the program, opioid prescriptions fell by 14% compared with a control group, the company says.

Insurer Travelers Cos. has developed an algorithm that analyzes thousands of claims and identifies the likelihood that an injured employee will develop chronic pain. Certain conditions, such as a prior case history of anxiety or depression, increase the chance that a patient will experience chronic pain, said Adam Seidner, Travelers’ medical director.

Those deemed at risk for chronic pain and addiction receive recommendations for alternate therapies, such as physical therapy and mental-health counseling, Dr. Seidner said.

Travelers says it cannot prevent a physician from prescribing opioids for at-risk patients, but it does urge care providers to follow a plan for alternate therapies and can refuse to authorize payment for a painkiller prescription, depending on state law.

Travelers says its algorithm, used in 20,000 cases in the past year, has helped reduce individual claim costs by as much as 50%. The predictive model and other efforts have helped reduce opioid prescriptions by 23% in the past 12 months among covered workers, according to the company.

To some extent, the industry is trying to solve a problem it helped create. Researchers found that about 65% to 85% of injured workers received narcotic painkillers under workers comp, according to an analysis of 264,000 claims by the Workers Compensation Research Institute.

Insurance broker Lockton has piloted a program in which injured workers undergo behavioral health and other screenings to assess risk of developing long-term pain or addiction. Workers with telltale traits – such as a tendency to view situations in catastrophic terms – may be steered toward less-powerful drugs to treat pain or referred to therapists able to treat the underlying sources of pain, said Keith Rosenblum, a senior workers’ compensation strategist at Lockton.

“You are creating zombies when you give [injured workers] opioids and sedatives,” Mr. Rosenblum said. “This is preventable.”