Return-to-Work

Doctor's Rx for Making Early Return-to-Work Work

According to Dr. Antony George, a physician in the Department of Occupational Medicine of University Mednet, part of the University Hospitals Health System, employers can facilitate the return to work by:

• Contacting injured workers/families within 24 hours of injury and maintaining contact during treatment and rehabilitation.
• Making injury-causing jobs safer (such as installing machine guarding to prevent hand injuries).
• Restricting recovering workers from performing certain tasks (such as repetitive or heavy lifting).
• Providing transitional work until the injury heals.
• Working with University Hospitals CompCare to offer a medically supervised work rehabilitation program.

Transitional work should be valuable and interesting, not useless and demeaning, Dr. George said. However, if it is too easy relative to other jobs in the facility, employees in general may covet transitional work as "a ticket out of a job they don't like," he warned. Set specific criteria for assignment to transitional jobs and do not set limits or goals for number of employees in transitional work, he said.

Employer and employee attitudes about restricted duty and transitional work vary widely. Some companies, Dr. George said, are "fanatics" about fast return-to-work and will even ignore medical advice to get an employee back to work, even if the employee cannot be productive. On the other hand, some employers are adamant about workers being 100 percent.

Dr. George recommends a middle-of-the-road approach: "Communication among University CompCare, physician, employer and employee is important because every case is different. An employee may be fine physically but not ready to return because of fear of re-injury. Or maybe medication doesn't allow him or her to operate heavy machinery. On the other hand, some people need the camaraderie of the work environment and will do anything to be part of that."

The doctor believes endless time off for recuperation and bed rest is rarely the best solution. "The costs are too high, and the risks to society too high, to just say, 'Come back when you're ready' or 'We'll call you when we need you.' An early return-to-work plan is a wise investment."