The percentage of loss time claims receiving Loss of Earnings benefits at 3 months has continued to rise amongst injured workers in Ontario despite the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) approach of "Better at Work". The primary health services to address loss time claims associated with musculoskeletal injuries include the evidenced-based programs of care, occupational health assessment program and musculoskeletal specialty programs, however, these are set to be revised and relaunched in Q1 2023. Across treatment protocols there are challenges that, at least in part, appear to contribute to the increasing percentage of workers on full loss of earnings at 3 months include (1) inconsistent early identification of workers who should be triaged to various health services and (2) reliable determination of the optimal timing of referral to the most targeted care to enable a safe and sustainable return to work. The investigators aim to develop and evaluate a predictive assessment model to triage workers to the best service within the first 8 weeks of their claim to increase the rate of early return to work, with the long-term goal that the triage protocol becomes part of a person-centric protocol that reduces the duration of work-related disability. The investigators will develop and evaluate an assessment protocol for injured workers that enter any of the musculoskeletal-specific WSIB programs of care, which have been consolidated into a single program as of 2023. This study will be a prospective inception cohort design using data collected from injured workers receiving WSIB musculoskeletal programs of care services at CBI Health clinics in Ontario Canada. Worker data will be collected at intake to the program of care service and again approximately four and eight weeks after intake (or earlier if a worker completes the program of care). The investigators will complete data analysis in three steps including descriptive and bivariate associations, Maximum Likelihood-based Latent Profile Analysis, and evaluation of results against successful work outcomes and secondary outcomes. Qualitative data will be mined for alternative indicators of recovery / non-recovery. The study recruitment goal is 300 - 350 workers with complete follow-up within a 2-year period.
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Work status
Timeframe: 8 weeks