The Video JA and Return to Work Issues

Saturday, August 21, 2004 | 0

There are certain problems doctors encounter in returning an injured worker back to the work place in an expeditious and appropriate manner:

a) Doctors at times do not understand the true nature of one's job activities and essential duties. Without accurate knowledge of these physical demands, a doctor will not know if it is safe to return the employee back to work, risking re-injury or injury to others. Recommending a job modification ergonomically or otherwise, would be difficult for a doctor to do.

b) Injured employees do not always represent their job activities in a truthful or accurate manner. Some untruthful employees may take advantage of the doctors good nature by relating a job description that is more physically taxing than it really is. At times injured employees will ask the doctor to place them off of work for a certain period of time based on these misrepresentations, and their request is often granted.

c) Well-meaning doctors will attempt to acquire a written job description, yet too often these written job descriptions are delivered late, or at times, for the more complex jobs, too complex to understand fully. Examples of this would be many of the manufacturing jobs, i.e., aircraft mechanic.

d) If alternate work is considered, it is difficult to obtain information from an employee, employer, or carrier, if other jobs inside the company exist. Many employers do not have an early return to work program in place. For those employers that do, a categorical job library of potential placement positions is not always accessible. At times doctors will not even get a return phone call from a supervisor so that transitional or modified work can be discussed.

As a result of the lack of proper and expeditious communication between the proper parties, doctors will often take the easier and alternate route... they simply take the injured employee off of work and keep off of work until they are fully healed. Of course, this decision directly affects the costs of the work injury case, as temporary disability payments accrue.

Given the recent advent of web-based streaming digital video technology (see, e.g. www.videojobanalysis.com), it is now possible to give the doctor immediate information regarding an employees job description. This technology is already being used by one of Southern Californias largest employers and the medical providers. Given the results of a recent survey, both on-site and off-site doctors feel that this technology will very much improve the early return to work process, and hopefully save costs.

When a picture can speak a 1000 words, one can imagine how many a video can speak. In an ideal world, an employer will have already had videos filmed of their various job classifications that invite injury. An employer will also have already filmed alternate, modified, and transitional work scenarios. When an injury occurs, a doctor can access via a personal computer the visual representation of the employees job activities. Once this is viewed by the doctor, immediate determinations can be made and communicated to the employer and carrier.

These videos can even aide in the detection of a worker who would likely have not injured themselves at work. For example, if a doctor does not see a correlation between the reported injury and the physical demands of his/her work. AOE/COE determinations can be made more immediately, thus limiting the employers exposure to the unnecessary payment of medical bills not related to the workplace. Recall, that with the new law SB899, the employer is liable for up to $10,000 in medical bills until the determination is made regarding causation.

Article by Dr. Eron Martin, Boeing Company Consultant, Video Job Analysis. Dr. Martin can be reached by phone at 949/548-7577, by e-mail at eron@videoja.com, or on the web at www.videoja.com.

The views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of workcompcentral.com, its editors or management.