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Written by Colleen McMurray, RN, BSN, MBA
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Wednesday, 01 September 2010 20:38 |
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 In today’s economy, many employers are doing more with less and struggling to stay competitive. That includes more actively managing their rising medical costs and focusing on the health and productivity of their workforce. At the same time, employees are worried about maintaining their benefits and the security of their jobs. Employees feeling vulnerable to job loss may conceal a medical condition from their employer if that condition makes it difficult to complete their job tasks. Inadvertently, such concealment can create a “perfect storm,” potentially exacerbating the employee’s medical condition and possibly leading to a work-related injury or a disability absence the employee was trying to avoid.
Supporting Employer and Employee Needs
While not all disabilities can be predicted or averted, employers who focus accommodation efforts solely on employees who are returning to work after a disability are missing a key opportunity to have a positive impact on reducing disability and maintaining a productive workforce. That opportunity is through a “stay-at-work” program. Stay-at-work programs can help employees avoid missed time and help employers retain productive members of their business.
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Written by Dan Blasini, RN, BSN, BC-CM
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Monday, 07 June 2010 17:14 |
 Holistic Strategies to Return a Patient to Work
Motivating, educating and facilitating bomb-blast injured service members to return back to combat or to work is a constant challenge in light of their new mental, physical and spiritual state. As members of a multidisciplinary team, we are challenged to help every one of these service members return to combat, cross train them into another military occupational specialty, or return to their own personal vocation utilizing their new prosthetic devices (ranging from fingers, arms, legs and feet).
Outside of the military camaraderie, it is sometimes even more challenging to encourage and assist persons who have sustained a crush injury or amputation—while on the job—to return back to gainful employment. As a nurse case manager for the military for four years and for Hanger Prosthetics for more than two years, I have had the privilege of working closely with workers’ compensation case managers, insurance adjusters and medical directors from around the United States in successfully assisting these injured persons in returning back to passionate and rewarding employment.
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Written by Darrell Schapmire, MS
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Wednesday, 14 April 2010 13:30 |
 And How to Bring These Difficult Cases to Closure
If a physician were to tell you that you have a medical condition that requires treatment, as a health care professional you would be savvy enough to ask for a diagnosis. You would ask how the diagnosis was confirmed, how you contracted the condition and what the standard course of treatment would be. No doubt, you would also want to know if the condition would worsen or improve with treatment, if there is a predictable outcome, or whether the condition might worsen. If the same physician told you there were no answers for most (if any) of those questions, you might feel you needed another opinion.
Organic pathologies have objective methods used for diagnosis. There is usually an identifiable causal relationship that is identified, whether that cause be the result of an infection, a reaction to an environmental factor, a genetic problem, a metabolic problem or an injury. There is a standard course of treatment, often complimented with the use of specific medications. Most organic pathologies will run a predictable course. The cure, progression or control of the pathology generally falls within predictable parameters. And outcomes too are generally predictable. There are answers for all of these questions for just about every condition that is encountered by the case manager, with the exception of a small handful of conditions—and fibromyalgia is one of those conditions. This article explores fibromyalgia in the context of its use in compensable injury claims.
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