Prognostic factors of long-term disability in a workers' compensation system.
OBJECTIVE
We identified predictive factors of long-term disability in new workers' compensation claims to guide secondary prevention research and target interventions for high-risk claims.


METHODS
Workers with 4 or more days of work disability resulting from workplace injuries were followed for approximately 6 years in a population-based retrospective inception cohort study of 81,077 workers.


RESULTS
Predictors of long-term disability included delay between injury and first medical treatment, older age, construction industry, logging occupation, longer time from medical treatment to claim filing, back injury, smaller firm size, female gender, higher unemployment rate, and having dependents. We used logistic and quantile regression to investigate predictors of disability. These models produced consistent information regarding predictors.


CONCLUSIONS
These factors can be used to identify jobs or workers at increased risk for long-term disability that warrant prevention intervention.
Stover
Bert
B
Department of Health Services, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98103-9058, USA. bstover@u.washington.edu
Wickizer
Thomas M
TM
Zimmerman
Fred
F
Fulton-Kehoe
Deborah
D
Franklin
Gary
G
D000328:Adult; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011379:Prognosis; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D014861:Washington; D014942:Workers' Compensation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*