Capturing cases in workers' compensation databases: the example of neck pain.
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.
Van Eerd
Dwayne
D
Institute for Work & Health, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. dvaneerd@iwh.on.ca
Côté
Pierre
P
Beaton
Dorcas
D
Hogg-Johnson
Sheilah
S
Vidmar
Marjan
M
Kristman
Vicki
V
D000062:Accidents, Occupational / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D000465:Algorithms; D003628:Database Management Systems; D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005568:Forms and Records Control / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D019838:Neck Injuries / Q000453:epidemiology*; D019547:Neck Pain / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D009864:Ontario / Q000453:epidemiology; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014942:Workers' Compensation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*