A three-part series on proactive intervention by BIOKINETIX
In Part I, we addressed why it’s important to help injured employees recover without interrupting the healing process.
The traditional return-to-work approach has often failed American workers, and the problem of recurrent injuries is just one example. After analyzing workers’ compensation data over a 3-year period, Liberty Mutual researchers found that a disproportionate amount of low back injuries were recurrent. Compared to those who had only been injured once, employees with recurrent injuries took longer to recover, accumulated significantly higher medical and indemnity costs, and were considered by study authors to be “an especially important target for secondary prevention efforts” [4]. Recurrent injuries can be prevented entirely by making sure employees recover properly the first time—so why are they still so common?