PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Ibrahim, Talal
AU  - Calderon-Margalit, Ronit
AU  - Halivni, Lilah Rinsky
TI  - O-488 Assessment of Multidisciplinary Intervention of Occupational Medicine and Physiotherapy on Return to Work of Patients with Musculoskeletal Disorders
AID  - 10.1136/OEM-2021-EPI.160
DP  - 2021 Nov 01
TA  - Occupational and Environmental Medicine
PG  - A60--A60
VI  - 78
IP  - Suppl 1
4099  - http://oem.bmj.com/content/78/Suppl_1/A60.2.short
4100  - http://oem.bmj.com/content/78/Suppl_1/A60.2.full
SO  - Occup Environ Med2021 Nov 01; 78
AB  - Introduction Musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), are a major public health concern worldwide, leading to substantial individual and societal burdens, incurring disability, work incapacitation, and absenteeism. Multidisciplinary interventions focusing on rehabilitating MSD are generally effective in facilitating integration and return-to-work (RTW). Israel serves as an ideal milieu for conducting multidisciplinary interventions, because OM service is free, egalitarian, and nationally provided to every worker by four Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), comparable to the physiotherapy (PT) service.Objectives Evaluating the effectiveness of a joint OM and PT intervention program in terms of RTW rates and time to RTW.Methods A quasi-experiment was conducted among MSD patients referred to the OM clinic of Jerusalem District’s Clalit HMO between 1/2016 and 6/2018. Patients allocated to OM-OT multidisciplinary intervention were matched to usual-care OM patients, receiving uncoordinated OT. Work status was followed-up using electronic medical records, employers’ communication, and phone interviews in 1/2019 assessing RTW. Multivariate adjusted regression and survival analyses were performed to evaluate associations between the intervention and RTW rates or time to RTW, including stratified analyses for symptom anatomy.Results Of 249 patients included in the study, 94 (38%) were treated by the multidisciplinary OM-OT intervention which demonstrated higher proportions of full-RTW (71.2%) compared to the usual care (51.6%). The intervention proved effective in RTW (OR=2.6, CI=1.4–4.8), which was earlier (HR=1.7, CI=1.2–2.4), with a median time to full-RTW of three months (SE=0.44) in the intervention group versus nine (SE=6.6) in the usual-care group. Higher odds for RTW were demonstrated among intervention patients with back/neck symptoms (3.3) compared to limbs (1.9).Conclusions Our field study proves the effectiveness of OM-OT collaboration in RTW, coordinating existing public medical systems that provide holistic treatment approaches. OM physicians’ involvement assists in tailoring rehabilitation OT treatment towards occupational-oriented goals. Additional multidisciplinary collaborations which include psychotherapists, occupational therapists, etc. should be further studied.