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. CONCLUSION: These factors can be used to identify jobs or workers at increased risk for long-term disability that warrant prevention intervention.