The World Health Organization recently recognized occupational burnout as a legitimate health syndrome. While that may sound a bit excessive at first glance, consider the results of a recent survey involving 2,000 working Americans: A shocking 36% of respondents reported dealing with feelings of on-the-job burnout every single week. Another 56% say they get burnt out on on the job at least once per month.

On the other hand, if stress and exhaustion isn’t gripping you mentally and physically at your desk, sadly you’re in a small minority. Only 12% of surveyed employees say they have never felt burnt out while working in their current position.

Conducted by telecommunications company TollFreeForwarding.com, the survey also revealed that roughly four in 10 employees deal with weekly health issues brought on by job-induced burnout. More specifically, 40% suffer from anxiety regularly, 44% report feeling exhausted on a weekly basis, and 56% say that intense feelings of stress have become part of their weekly routine.

All of that burnout is creeping into other areas of people’s lives as well, with 54% of respondents saying their sleep patterns have suffered due to burnout, 44% say their work / life balance has been impacted, 37% have become less ambitious in their career motivations, and 36% have seen their overall productivity drop.

It isn’t just the employees who are paying for all this burnout, either. Sick days and loss of personnel is also costing many U.S. businesses. In all, 34% of respondents say they take a day off at least every six months due to burnout, and nearly half (48%) say they their job satisfaction has taken a blow due to burnout. In fact, over half of respondents (55%) have already considered leaving their job due to a perceived lack of support regarding burnout, stress, etc.

It seems many employees feel like their employers aren’t doing enough; 50% of respondents say the companies they work for need to do more to curb employee burnout. Another two-thirds (67%) are worried what all of that stress, anxiety, and exhaustion is going to do their bodies in the long-term.

“Burnout is now officially recognized as an illness, so we thought now was a good time to help uncover more about how employees are feeling in their workplace, and how much support they feel they’re getting,” comments COO of TollFreeForwarding.com James O’Brien in a statement. “Awareness of overworking, and the health problems this can cause, is increasing. Here however, we’ve discovered there is much work to be done. What businesses must recognize is that not addressing burnout is not only bad for health reasons, it’s also bad for business.”

Among the survey’s other findings was that healthcare workers are experiencing burnout symptoms at greater rates than any other profession. Furthermore, it’s clear from the survey’s findings that modern businesses and organizations need to address employee burnout in a proactive, not reactive, manner. For example, a “high-pressure working environment” was the most often-cited reason given by respondents for burnout (44%), followed by “lack of support or communication from management” (38%).

A federal grand jury in San Diego returned a superseding indictment that charges U. S. Navy servicemembers Dr. Michael Villarroel, Paul Craig, and Christopher Toups with fraud, false claims and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

The charges arise from a scheme where the defendants filed fraudulent claims to obtain unearned benefits from the Traumatic Servicemembers Group Life Insurance Program (“TSGLI”).

The TSGLI program is an insurance program that compensates servicemembers who suffer serious and debilitating injuries while on active duty. The program is funded by fees paid directly by individual service members and the Department of Defense.

Dr. Michael Villarroel, a Commander in the U.S. Navy, was the medical doctor for the Explosive Ordinance Disposal Expeditionary Support Unit One (“EOD ESU One”) from March 2010 through May 2013. In that capacity, Dr. Villarroel knowingly signed off on false and fraudulent TSGLI applications on behalf of multiple servicemembers that were part of or connected to EOD ESU One.

Both Christopher Toups, a former Chief Petty Officer Construction Mechanic, and Paul Craig, a former Lt. Commander in the U.S. Navy, filed fraudulent TSLGI applications. To support their applications, each defendant submitted fabricated applications that included forged signatures and altered hospital records. According to the superseding indictment, Craig fraudulently collected $150,000 and Toups collected at least $100,000.

In addition to Christopher Toups, four other individuals were previously indicted in connection with this scheme. Three of those individuals – Richard Cote, Earnest Thompson, and Kelene Meyer – have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and as part of their plea, admitted that the conspirators defrauded the TSGLI program of nearly $2 million.

According to the plea agreement, Meyer, a former nurse in the U.S. Navy, stated that Toups, Villarroel, and she received kickbacks for creating and filing the fraudulent TSGLI applications for other U.S. Navy servicemembers.

Investigators seized over 44 pounds of fentanyl in an Ohio drug bust, a quantity large enough to wipe out the state’s entire population “many times over,” officials revealed Wednesday.

The raid unfolded in Dayton last week. In addition to the fentanyl, investigators seized some 1,500 grams of suspected methamphetamine, 500 grams of suspected heroin, three firearms and $30,000, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office announced.

“Twenty kilograms of fentanyl is enough to kill the entire population of Ohio, many times over,” Vance Callender, the Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge for Michigan and Ohio, said in a statement.

Officers arrested three suspects — Shamar Davis, 31, Anthony Franklin, 30, and Grady Jackson, 37. All faced charges including possession with intent to distribute 400 or more grams of fentanyl, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

“The quantity of fentanyl in this case amounts to chemical warfare and a weapon of mass destruction,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said. “I applaud the work of our task force and our law enforcement partners – this is an enormous amount of deadly drugs that will no longer be on our streets.”

“This multi-million dollar fentanyl seizure clearly shows the enormity of the opioid problem in this area,” Acting Special Agent in Charge Joseph M. Deters of the FBI’s Cincinnati Division added. “Law enforcement will continue to work aggressively to address the illegal drug supply, but there is also a continuing need to address demand as well.”

Ohio was one of four states in the U.S. — along with Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Hampshire — that saw an increase of more than 500 fentanyl-related incidents from 2014 to 2015, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most recently, the state grappled with a surge of overdoses linked to fentanyl, resulting in six deaths over the span of 24 hours this past September. Prior to that, in July, nine people died from overdoses in a two-day period.

California workers’ compensation reforms enacted in 2003 and 2004 introduced a new process for approving medical services for injured workers, including the adoption of mandatory utilization review (UR) using evidence-based medicine guidelines.

Nearly a decade later, state lawmakers included reforms in SB 863 that added a new element to the medical service approval process, mandating the use of independent medical review (IMR) to resolve disputes over medical necessity.

The California Workers’ Compensation Institute’s latest study of California’s medical benefit delivery process expands on earlier analyses to determine the proportion of requested and/or delivered care that is approved versus denied after UR and IMR by service category.

Results show that 94.1 percent of services performed or requested from January 1, 2018 to October 31, 2018 were either approved (92.5 percent) or approved with modifications (1.6 percent), and 5.9 percent were denied, though outcomes varied by service category.

Evaluation and management services (e.g., office and emergency department visits, consultations) represented 29 .1 percent of the medical services in the 2018 data set and had an approval rate of 99.7 percent.

Surgery services were approved with or without modifications 94.9 percent of the time, while 89.4 percent of physical medicine services (physical therapy, chiropractic manipulation, and acupuncture) were approved with or without modifications.

The study also examines the impact of the UR provisions of 2016 legislation (SB 1160), which effective Janua1y 1, 2018, exempted certain services from prospective UR.

One goal of SB 1160 was to speed delivery of medical care, and while the study does find that the proportion of physical medicine services performed in the first 30 days increased from 2017 to 2018, there was no meaningful change in the delivery of other services. At the same time, the total volume of services performed in the first 60 days from injury did not increase and the denial rate for these services remained very low in both periods, ranging from 0.0 to 4.8 percent.

For the first time, the authors were able to estimate the proportion of UR denials and modifications that underwent IMR and found that an estimated 29 percent of UR modification and denial decisions were appealed and reviewed by an IMR physician.

However, an examination of the top law firms identified in the UR data reveals that the IMR referral rates by applicant attorneys varied greatly. Some attorneys submitted nearly all of their clients’ treatment modifications and denials to IMR, while others sent none.

The last section of the study continues the Institute’s monitoring of IMR volumes and results. After a 7 percent increase in volume from 2017 to 2018, IMR volume for the first half of 2019 appears to be dropping back toward 2017 levels.

As in 2018, IMR reviewers have upheld UR decisions 88 percent of the time through the first half of 2019. In addition, a small number of physicians continue to drive a disproportionate share of the IMR volume, with the top 1 percent associated with 44 percent of the IMR decisions.

Evidence is weak for whether medicinal cannabis treatments can relieve mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression and psychosis, and doctors should prescribe them with great caution, researchers said on Monday.

Reuters Health published a review of scientific studies that analyzed the impact of medicinal cannabinoids on six mental health disorders, the researchers found “a lack of evidence for their effectiveness.”

Their findings have important implications for countries such as the United States, Australia, Britain and Canada, where medical cannabis is being made available for patients with certain illness, said Louisa Degenhardt, a drug and alcohol expert at Australia’s University of New South Wales in Sydney.

“There is a notable absence of high-quality evidence to properly assess the effectiveness and safety of medicinal cannabinoids … and until evidence from randomized controlled trials is available, clinical guidelines cannot be drawn up around their use in mental health disorders,” she said as her results were published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal.

Despite a lack of clinical trial evidence, anecdotally some military veterans and others who suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety say they have found cannabis helpful in easing some of their symptoms. Other conditions cannabis is used for include nausea, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury, but this study did not examine its impact on those.

Medicinal cannabinoids include medicinal cannabis and pharmaceutical cannabinoids, as well as their synthetic derivatives, THC, or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol – the main psychoactive ingredient of cannabis – and cannabidiol, or CBD.

“Cannabinoids are often advocated as a treatment for various mental health conditions,” Degenhardt said. “(But) clinicians and consumers need to be aware of the low quality and quantity of evidence … and the potential risk of adverse events.”

Degenhardt’s team sought to look at all available evidence for all types of medicinal cannabinoids. They included all study designs and investigated the impact on remission from and symptoms of depression, anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Tourette syndrome, PTSD and psychosis. They analyzed 83 published and unpublished studies covering around 3,000 people between 1980 and 2018.

They found that pharmaceutical THC – either with or without CBD – made psychosis worse, and did not significantly affect any other primary outcomes for the mental illnesses analyzed.

It also increased the number of people who reported side effects, and the number who decided to withdraw from a study due to side effects.

Tom Freeman, an addiction and mental health expert at Britain’s Bath University who was not involved with the study, said the findings highlighted an urgent need for high-quality trials of medical cannabis to strengthen the evidence – particularly given what he said was “significant demand” from patients.