Article Text
Abstract
Objective The objective of this study was to examine the predictive relationships between employee health risk factors (HRFs) and workers' compensation (WC) claim occurrence and costs.
Methods Logistic regression and generalised linear models were used to estimate the predictive association between HRFs and claim occurrence and cost among a cohort of 16 926 employees from 314 large, medium and small businesses across multiple industries. First, unadjusted (HRFs only) models were estimated, and second, adjusted (HRFs plus demographic and work organisation variables) were estimated.
Results Unadjusted models demonstrated that several HRFs were predictive of WC claim occurrence and cost. After adjusting for demographic and work organisation differences between employees, many of the relationships previously established did not achieve statistical significance. Stress was the only HRF to display a consistent relationship with claim occurrence, though the type of stress mattered. Stress at work was marginally predictive of a higher odds of incurring a WC claim (p<0.10). Stress at home and stress over finances were predictive of higher and lower costs of claims, respectively (p<0.05).
Conclusions The unadjusted model results indicate that HRFs are predictive of future WC claims. However, the disparate findings between unadjusted and adjusted models indicate that future research is needed to examine the multilevel relationship between employee demographics, organisational factors, HRFs and WC claims.
- Occupational injury
- Health risk assessment
- Small business
- Worksite wellness
- Total Worker Health
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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Footnotes
Twitter Follow Natalie Schwatka at @nvschwatka
Contributors Each author has made substantial contributions to this study, provided help revising this paper for important intellectual content, gave final approval for this version of the paper and agree to be accountable for all aspects of this work.
Funding This study was funded by Pinnacol Assurance.
Competing interests All coauthors have filled out the ICMJE form. The competing interests include support from Pinnacol Assurance to conduct this study.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.