Nurse wins disability benefits for incorrect HIV-test report.
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Managed disability is an effective tool to reduce the expense of disability claims. However, many employers have not realized the financial significance of lost time due to unexpected absence. This article discusses emerging trends that contribute to the need for absence/lost time management, quantifying the costs of lost time to the employer. Methods for tracking absence/ lost time are illustrated, as well as examples of lost time management.
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More attention should be paid to dystonia as a consequence of trauma, particularly with regard to legal aspects. The underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of dystonia following central or peripheral trauma are largely unknown. Hemidystonia after severe head trauma is regarded to be due to contralateral basal ganglia lesions, particularly of the putamen. Focal and segmental dystonias follow various kinds of peripheral trauma. Central synaptic reorganisation due to altered peripheral input may play a role in its genesis. Clinically, post-traumatic dystonia differs from the idiopathic disease by the presence of accompanying pain or causalgia, limitation of the range of movement up to fixed posture, and poor response to conventional pharmacotherapy. If an expert opinion is requested, it is important to ascertain the diagnosis clinically and by EMG. To establish the cause-and-effect relationship between trauma and movement disorder, the severity of the injury, time course, and anatomical relationship must be taken into consideration.
OBJECTIVE: Little is known concerning the frequency of disability payments due to depressive and bipolar affective disorders in Germany. METHOD: 177 consecutive psychiatric in-patients were assessed with standardized interviews concerning diagnosis (SCID-I, DSM-IV) and illness history. To compare unipolar depressive and bipolar affective patients, a survival analysis was calculated. RESULTS: 116 patients suffered from unipolar depression, 61 from bipolar affective disorder. Highly significantly, patients with bipolar affective disorders were granted disability payments more frequently and at an earlier age. Half of the bipolar affective patients received disability payments by the age of 46 years, half of the unipolar depressive patients by the age of 58 years. CONCLUSIONS: In this sample, bipolar affective patients received disability payments frequently and at an early age, which stresses that the prognosis of bipolar affective disorders is not as good as has been assumed for a long time. Early disability payments may lead to poverty and may obstruct access to social rehabilitation.
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BACKGROUND: People of low socioeconomic status have worse health and a higher probability of being granted a disability pension than people of high socioeconomic status. It is also known that public and private general physicians and public and private specialists have varying practices for issuing sick leave certificates (which, if longstanding, may become the basis of disability pensions). However, few studies have investigated the influence of a patient's country of birth in this context. METHODS: We used multilevel logistic regression analysis with individuals (first level) nested within countries of birth (second level). We analysed the entire population between the ages of 40 and 64 years (n = 80,212) in the city of Malmo, Sweden, in 2003, and identified 73% of that population who had visited a physician at least once during that year. We studied the associations between individuals and country of birth socioeconomic characteristics, as well as individual utilisation of different kinds of physicians in relation to having been granted a disability pension. RESULTS: Living alone (ORwomen = 1.72, 95% CI: 1.62-1.82; ORmen = 2.64, 95% CI: 2.46-2.83) and having limited educational achievement (ORwomen = 2.14, 95% CI: 2.00-2.29; ORmen = 2.12, 95% CI: 1.98-2.28) were positively associated with having a disability pension. Utilisation of public specialists was associated with a higher probability (ORwomen = 2.11, 95% CI: 1.98-2.25; ORmen = 2.16, 95% CI: 2.01-2.32) and utilisation of private GPs with a lower probability (ORmen = 0.76, 95% CI: 0.69-0.83) of having a disability pension. However, these associations differed by countries of birth. Over and above individual socioeconomic status, men from middle income countries had a higher probability of having a disability pension (ORmen = 1.61, 95% CI: 1.06-2.44). CONCLUSION: The country of one's birth appears to play a significant role in understanding how individual socioeconomic differences bear on the likelihood of receiving a disability pension and on associated patterns of health care utilisation.
OBJECTIVE: To determine if administrative data relating to the uptake of disability benefits held by government departments in Northern Ireland are fair and unbiased indicators of relative need for health care and therefore a useful addition to census data. METHOD: This is an ecological study of the 566 electoral wards in Northern Ireland. The variation in uptake of a health-related benefit (Disability Living Allowance) was regressed against three other indicators of health (limiting long-term illness, mortality and the numbers of patients admitted to hospital). All the indicators had been indirectly standardised by age and sex. The unstandardised residuals from this model were regressed against the social and geographical factors, namely area deprivation score, religious denominational composition and urban/rural dwelling to see if they influenced benefit uptake above and beyond any association with ill health. RESULTS: The health factors alone explained 77.2% of the variation in benefit uptake, with limiting long-term illness being the major determinant; however, even after controlling for differences in health status, benefit uptake was shown to be higher in more urban areas and in areas that had a greater proportion of Catholics. Area deprivation was not associated with benefit uptake once health differences had been controlled for. CONCLUSION: Administrative data on disability benefits can undoubtedly provide useful additional information for describing the levels of relative disadvantage or ill health of areas. However, because they also reflect variations in uptake, which appears to be confounded by social and geographical factors, we would urge caution when they are used to identify priority areas or to allocate resources.
Although the managed health care industry evolved and matured in the 1980s and 1990s, such initiatives to control disability costs failed to keep pace. As employers became aware of the costs of lost productivity, managed disability programs quickly evolved. This article discusses the trends, issues and assumptions in managed health and disability models, providing case studies to support the authors' hypothesis that health plans can have a direct impact on disability duration.
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OBJECTIVES: As the disabled have higher prevalence rates and earlier onsets of chronic diseases than the non-disabled, their participation in mass screening is important for the early detection and intervention of chronic diseases. Nevertheless, in Korea, the disabled have lower participation rates in mass screening services than the non-disabled. The purpose of the study was to find determinants for the participation in the National Health Insurance (NHI) mass screening program among the disabled. METHODS: In this study, the NHI mass screening data of 423,076 disabled people, which were identified using the National Disability Registry (2003), were analyzed. Of the factors affecting the participation rates in mass screenings, the following variables were included for the analysis: socioeconomic stati, such as sex, age, category of health insurance program, region and income; disability characteristics, such as disability type, and severity. A multiple logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the association between the participation rates, disability characteristics variables and demographic variables. RESULTS: The participation rate in mass screening of the disabled was 41.3%, but was lower in females, an age of more than 70 years, self-employed and for those with an average monthly insurance premium over 133,500 Won and in metropolitan regions. The participation rate was 1.31 times lower in females than males (95% CI=1.29-1.33); 3.50 times lower in the elderly (more than 70 years) than the younger (95% CI=3.33-3.67); 1.43 times lower in those who live in metropolitan areas (95% CI=1.40-1.46); 2.59 times lower for those in a health insurance program for the self-employed than for employees (95% CI=2.56-2.63); 1.19 times lower for the higher income (more than 133,500) than the lower income group (4,400-22,000) for the average monthly insurance premium (95% CI=1.15-1.23); 2.04 times lower for those with brain palsy and stroke disabilities than with auditory impairments (95% CI= 1.97-2.11) and 3.27 times for those with severe compared to mild disabilities (95% CI=3.15-3.40). CONCLUSIONS: The disabled with high severity, and locomotive and communication disabilities have lower participation rates in mass screening services in Korea.
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