Hospital Qualities Related to Return to Work from Occupational Injury after Controlling for Injury Severity as Well as Occupational Characteristics

Abstract

We examined associations betweenhospitalquality in the workers' compensation system and injured patients'returntoworkaftercontrollingforinjuryseverity,occupationalfactors, and demographic factors.Returntoworkdata of injured workers were constructed from 2 datasets: 23,392 patients injured in 2009-2011 from the Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service andreturntoworkdata from Korea Employment Information Services.Afterde-identifying the data, quality scores were matched for eachhospitalthat cared for injured patients.Injuryseveritywas measured by AbbreviatedInjuryScales. Relative risk and 95% confidence interval were calculated using log binomial regression models.Afteradjusting for age, sex,injuryseverity, occupation, factory size, city, andhospitaltype, the relative risk (95% confidence interval) for the total score was 1.04 (1.02-1.06), 1.06 (1.04-1.09), and 1.07 (1.05-1.10) in the 2(nd), 3(rd), and 4(th) quartiles, respectively, compared to the 1(st) quartile. The RR (95% CI) in the 2(nd), 3(rd), and 4(th) quartiles was 1.05 (1.02-1.07), 1.05 (1.02-1.08), and 1.06 (1.04-1.09) for the process score; and 1.02 (1.01-1.04), 1.05 (1.03-1.07), and 1.06 (1.04-1.09) for the outcome score compared to the 1(st) quartile score, respectively. In conclusion, our study design with blinded merge methods shows that total, process, and outcomequalitiesarerelatedto thereturntoworkof injured workersaftercontrollingfor other factors.