Predicting work-related disability and medical cost outcomes: estimating injury severity scores from workers' compensation data

Details

• Personal Author:
  Adams D ; Blanar L ; Bowman SM ; Sears JM ; Silverstein BA
• Description:
  PURPOSE: Acute work-related trauma is a leading cause of death and disability among US workers. The research objectives were to assess: (1) the feasibility of estimating Abbreviated Injury Scale-based injury severity scores (ISS) from ICD-9-CM codes available in workers' compensation (WC) medical billing data, (2) whether ISS predicts work-related disability and medical cost outcomes, (3) whether ISS adds value over other injury severity proxies, and (4) whether the utility of ISS differs for an all-injury sample compared with three specific injury samples (amputations, extremity fractures, traumatic brain injury). METHODS: ISS was estimated from ICD-9-CM codes using Stata's user-written -icdpic- program for 208,522 compensable nonfatal WC claims for workers injured in Washington State from 1998 to 2008. The Akaike Information Criterion and R(2) were used to compare severity measures. Competing risks survival analysis was used to evaluate work disability outcomes. Adjusted total medical costs were modeled using linear regression. RESULTS: Work disability and medical costs increased monotonically with injury severity. For a subset of 4,301 claims linked to the Washington State Trauma Registry (WTR), there was moderate agreement between WC-based ISS and WTR-based ISS. Including ISS together with an early hospitalization indicator resulted in the most informative models; however, early hospitalization is a more downstream measure. CONCLUSIONS: ISS was significantly associated with work disability and medical cost outcomes for work-related injuries. Injury severity should be considered as a potential confounder for occupational injury intervention, program evaluation, or outcome studies, and can be estimated using existing software when ICD-9-CM codes are available. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Health Care Facilities Workforce And Services Occupational Health Safety Workplace
• Keywords:
  Analytical-instruments Author Keywords: Injury Severity Data-processing Disabled-workers ICDPIC Information-retrieval-systems Information-systems Injuries Medical-services Occupational Injuries Surveillance-programs Survival-rate Trauma Severity Indices Traumatic-injuries Work-environment Work Disability Workers' Compensation

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• ISSN:
  1053-0487
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Maryland ; OSHA Region 10 ; OSHA Region 3 ; Washington
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  19-31
• Volume:
  23
• Issue:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20043093
• Citation:
  J Occup Rehabil 2013 Mar; 23(1):19-31
• Contact Point Address:
  Jeanne M. Sears, PhD, RN, Department of Health Services, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Box 354809, Seattle, WA 98195 USA
• Email:
  jeannes@u.washington.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2013
• Performing Organization:
  University of Washington, Seattle
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20100901
• Source Full Name:
  Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation
• End Date:
  20120831
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:51c13f640657fd32f7741fffae6d12ca10449ef0a590a73e611dcb1fe52a0871bccb250b8a9939c74412ae6f1be6f57a026f967ac1f2a11663050f1ad80720f3
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/195107/cdc_195107_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 291.87 KB ]