Premium
Capturing cases in workers' compensation databases: The example of neck pain
Author(s) -
Van Eerd Dwayne,
Côté Pierre,
Beaton Dorcas,
HoggJohnson Sheilah,
Vidmar Marjan,
Kristman Vicki
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
american journal of industrial medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.7
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1097-0274
pISSN - 0271-3586
DOI - 10.1002/ajim.20329
Subject(s) - medicine , workers' compensation , neck pain , compensation (psychology) , diagnosis code , soft tissue , epidemiology , physical therapy , database , surgery , environmental health , pathology , population , psychology , alternative medicine , computer science , psychoanalysis
Background There is a need to more accurately enumerate workers with musculoskeletal injuries who make lost‐time claims to workers compensation boards. The objective of this study is to develop an approach to more accurately enumerate these workers. Methods Lost‐time claims to the Ontario Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB) were reviewed. Using neck pain as an example, nature of injury and part of body codes were identified to classify cases. Claims of a random sample of 434 claimants were reviewed. The proportion of claimants classified as having neck pain was computed. Results The proportion of claimants classified with soft‐tissue injuries to the neck varied from 0.88 for codes including “neck/cervical region,” 0.69 for “back region” to 0.05 for those coded as “shoulder/upper arm.” Conclusions Restricting the enumeration of injuries to specific part of body codes can lead to a gross underestimation of the magnitude of soft‐tissue disorders in epidemiological studies using workers' compensation data. The proposed approach leads to more accurate enumeration. Am. J. Ind. Med. 49:557–568, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.