Citation

Besen E, Harrell M, Pransky G. J. Occup. Environ. Med. 2015; 58(1): 53-60.

Affiliation

Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton (Dr Besen and Dr Pransky) and Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts (Dr Harrell III).

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

10.1097/JOM.0000000000000591

PMID

26445030

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to examine the associations between lag times following occupational low back injury and the length of work disability.

METHODS: In a retrospective cohort study using workers' compensation claims, random effects Tobit models were used to explore how disability length relates to three lag times: the number of days from the date of injury to reporting the injury, the number of days from the date of injury to medical care, and the number of days from the date of injury to initiating work disability.

RESULTS: In general, shorter lag times for each of the different lags were related to shorter lengths of disability.

CONCLUSIONS: Decreasing the length of the lag times in reporting injuries, receiving medical care, and missing work may help to decrease the length of work disability for workers after low back injury.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License, where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0.

Language: en