Surveys show that two out of every three employers viewed prescription drug abuse as a bigger workplace problem than illegal drugs. One in five reported an injury or near-miss related to prescription drug use. A quarter indicated employees borrowed or sold prescription drugs at work and 40% indicate that they have an employee who misses work because of prescription drug abuse. The Centers for Disease Control report that 44 persons die each day as a result of prescription opioid abuse. Everyone is at risk for addiction, but here are some factors that increase the risk:
How can you tell if someone you know is abusing drugs? It may be difficult to notice first thing in the morning or upon return from break because the employee may appear to be relaxed and functioning well. But, as the day goes on and more time passes between breaks you may notice mood swings or major changes in energy level. They may nod off or even fall asleep at their workstation, in their car, or while using the bathroom. Withdrawal symptoms often appear to be like the flu with nausea, diarrhea, sweating, shaking, aches and a runny nose, and the employee may become irritable and anxious. This cycle may repeat itself several times throughout the day. Other signs might include the development of financial problems, social withdrawal and a once outgoing worker may become quiet and grim.
What can employers do to prevent drug abuse in the workplace? Conduct pre-employment and random drug screenings (but make sure opioid screening is included). Create a clearly written Drug-Free Workplace Policy which provides employee education, supervisor training, and an employee assistance program.
The problem of opioid abuse in the workplace is staggering. In Wisconsin 80% of worker’s compensation claims involve pain medications, including opioids. One good way to make sure addiction doesn’t occur in the first place is to closely monitor injured workers who are prescribed opioids by their treating doctors. For worker’s compensation cases, Involving nurse case managers after opioids are prescribed may be beneficial to assuring that drug use is monitored and treating physicians are being held accountable for the prescriptions they write.
The topic for the 2017 Advanced Topics in Worker’s Compensation Symposium will be Opioid Abuse in the Workplace. For more information or to register, click here.
The IME report can serve several functions, but there is one thing common to every IME: the doctor makes the difference.
So how do you choose the best doctor for your case? The reason for seeking the IME will be an important consideration. If causation alone is the issue, then you may want an expert who is skilled at analyzing mechanisms of injury or physical job demands analysis. Let’s say it is indisputable that the examinee needs a knee replacement and the only issue is whether repetitive job activities contributed to the claimant’s knee condition. In this case, you may want an occupational medicine specialist who has experience with job demand analysis and has studied the effects of repetitive activities on the development of osteoarthritis.
On the other hand, if the reasonableness and necessity of treatment is a major issue in the case then you will want to have a specialist qualified to address treatment. Let’s say a lumbar fusion has been recommended but seems likely to fail for some identifiable reason. In this case you will want a spine surgery specialist who can credibly explain the reasons why the proposed surgery is likely to fail and is thus contraindicated.
Once the purpose of the IME has been identified, what are other considerations in determining the best expert? Several strategies can be used. First and foremost is the requester’s experience. Each claims and legal professional will have her own idiosyncrasies and practical experiences when it comes to IME experts. This combination of experience and preference is the chief guide most claim professionals do and should use in choosing an expert. You don’t want to reinvent the wheel: if you had a good experience with an expert on a similar claim in the recent past, you probably don’t need to expend mental energy and productive time searching for another expert. Use the one you already know.
Unfortunately, we run into unique or otherwise unusual situations for which an expert is not immediately obvious to the claim or legal professional. In this case, the investigation should start closest to home and gradually expand outward. Thus, the next step would be to consult one’s colleagues. In any claims department or law firm, the chance of encountering a wholly novel claim is relatively small, which means someone in the department or the office has probably dealt with a similar situation in the past. Consulting with peers is an efficient way to find the right doctor for an unusual claim. This step, when it is successful, has the built in advantage of having evidence to support the decision. For example, if a complicated neurological condition such as syringomyelia is alleged to have arisen from an accident, the appropriate expert may not be immediately obvious. Most orthopedic spine specialists and even the majority of neurosurgeons are unlikely to have experience with this condition. Nevertheless, in a large claims department or a law firm there is a decent possibility that someone has encountered a similar condition in a prior claim and used an IME. If a similar claim exists and the IME was good, then the query should probably be over.
If a survey of one’s peers still does not give the claims professional a satisfactory recommendation for an IME specialist, one may wish to consider the nature of the case and contact an attorney. In most claims, the ultimate disposition would be a trial, whether in an administrative or court setting. Hence, there will be issues to consider that relate to the possibility that a claim will not settle and will end up before a judge, jury, or administrative law judge. In this case, an attorney can provide valuable guidance with respect to qualified experts that will be credible in the particular litigation forum. An expert that might be well-suited for a personal injury claim could be ill-suited for a worker’s compensation claim or vice-versa. Practicing attorneys with whom you have a relationship can be an enormously valuable resource to use when deciding on what IME expert to use.
Your IME vendor can also be an excellent source of information regarding what doctors specialize in or have a clinical interest in a particular condition. Your IME vendor should have the tools necessary to identify the right expert. The best vendors actively recruit doctors to offer the widest range of specialists possible. In addition, when the best vendors vet their experts, they identify and note each expert’s specialties and areas of clinical interest to make the choice easier for you. The best vendors also schedule countless IME’s for many different clients, so there is a good chance that the vendor has run into a similar condition in 
the past and can recommend a physician based on the earlier case. Finally, the best vendors will be sensitive to your requirements and will tailor any recommendations so that the doctors put forward will prepare a report that meets your requirements.
At Medical Systems we strive to be a resource for you. We have a wealth of knowledge and experience that we put at your disposal. If you have a claim, chances are we’ve seen one like it before. We know what’s worked in the past and we share that information with our clients. And we get to know our clients so that we can match the expert that not only has the right experience but also meets your specific needs, be it turnaround time, style of writing, or type of analysis. While there are no guarantees, we will do our part to ensure that you choose the best and most qualified expert for your claim.
Choosing the medical expert is a critical decision in the life of your claim or case. This is true in every case, but can be especially true in some situations where you may be bound to your selected expert through the entire case. Regardless, be sure to consider all the issues on your case, the medical questions, and the purposes of the report, and also use all available resources to ensure that your choice of medical expert is the best possible option.
We have written about the potential to use stem cells to regenerate articular cartilage in this space before. Now researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have grown articular cartilage using a person’s own stem cells in a moldable 3D synthetic scaffold. The development is exciting because the scaffold can be molded around the shape of an arthritic femoral head, thus potentially replacing a person’s damaged articular cartilage with healthy cartilage. If this potential treatment becomes a reality, it could offer an alternative to total hip replacement surgery. This would be particularly beneficial for patients under 50 years of age with advanced hip arthritis since most prostheses last less than 20 years and replacing a prosthetic hip carries with it greater complications than the original replacement. While the research is preliminary and has not yet been tested in animals (let alone humans), it is exciting and worth following, especially considering the fact that 322,000 hip replacements are performed annually in the United States alone.
Employment-related meniscus tears are among the more common worker’s compensation claims. The reasons are myriad but are influenced by the fact that most people develop degenerative meniscus tears as they age and the mechanism of injury for an acute tear merely involves twisting the knee, which can occur in even the lightest and most sedentary occupations because all workers who are not wheelchair-bound walk which means all workers are at risk of twisting their knee in a slip, trip, or fall at the workplace. Setting aside the possibility that such an event is idiopathic, if a worker seeks medical treatment for knee pain following an industrial event and a meniscus tear is discovered on an MRI the treating physician usually relates the tear to the event. Standard treatment in most such cases is usually surgical excision of the loose or torn meniscal tissue, more commonly known as a meniscectomy. The assumption driving the surgery is that the meniscus tear is causing the knee pain and resecting the tear will eliminate the pain. The problem with this scenario is that most meniscus tears are degenerative and there is no high quality research demonstrating that meniscectomy is an effective treatment for degenerative meniscus tears. In fact, when researchers recently studied the question they found that exercise was equally effective as meniscectomy to treat knee pain in the presence of a degenerative meniscus tear, according to results published in the British Medical Journal (“BMJ”).
In the worker’s compensation setting, the argument is often made that an industrial event extended a preexisting degenerative meniscus tear in order to justify the surgical intervention (and coverage of the procedure under a worker’s compensation insurance policy). The cost of meniscectomies to the worker’s compensation system is substantial. The medical expenses alone are significantly higher for surgery than for conservative care. In addition, meniscectomies often result in some permanent partial disability. For example, a meniscectomy in Wisconsin carries with it a 5% minimum PPD rating to the lower extremity at the level of the knee and under the AMA Guides a meniscectomy typically results in at least a 1% impairment rating. Surgery also typically necessitates a period of temporary total disability in non-sedentary workers. The findings of the BMJ study should give every employer and worker’s compensation insurer pause and an editorial advocating systemic prohibition of using arthroscopy to treat knee pain that appears in the same issue should spur change.
First, a few things about the study itself. The BMJ study is a level 1, properly designed randomized controlled trial. This is the highest category of medical studies and is considered to produce the best and most reliable evidence available. The BMJ study was conducted in Norway and was a randomized control trial with two parallel intervention groups of 70 patients per group. One group received exercise alone and the other group received partial meniscectomy alone. The participants were 35-60 year old persons of both sexes with a 2+ month history of unilateral knee pain without a major trauma but with a verified medial meniscus tear verified on MRI and no worse than grade 2 arthritic changes on x-ray. The study found that there was no difference in outcomes between the two groups at 3 months and 24 months post-intervention. The meniscectomy group reported better function and greater participation in sports and recreation at 12 months post-intervention, but the effect was gone by 24 months. The authors could “not exclude the possibility that the greater placebo effect from surgery on patient outcomes” may have “mask[ed] the ‘real’ difference in treatment between the groups,” which they postulated could explain the temporary effects observed in the meniscectomy group.
More striking even than the study findings is the accompanying editorial. The authors of the editorial call for a systemic level rule to prevent unnecessary knee arthroscopies from being performed to treat knee pain. As they note, in the last decade:
The editorial authors note there has never been high quality research supporting meniscectomy in an older population with degenerative meniscus tears, but that the procedure was extended to this population based on unverified assumptions:
The conclusion they reach is both astonishing and harsh:
In short, the authors believe the evidence against arthroscopy to treat knee pain is so strong and the evidence for it is so weak that health systems as a whole should stop paying for these procedures. Such a rule would have a significant impact on worker’s compensation claims where meniscectomies are routinely performed to treat degenerative meniscus tears.
In many claims, the recorded statement is the first and only time a claims professional has to hear what the claimant has to say about the incident precipitating the claim without the presence of counsel. As such, it provides a unique opportunity to gather information and develop a record of sorts against which the facts of the claim can be judged. Unfortunately, recorded statements are often cursory, covering a checklist of questions without securing much in the way of detail about the incident and the claimant’s level of functioning pre- and post-incident. Part of the reason is the checklist of questions. They are often slavishly adhered to rather than used as a guide for areas that the claims professional wants the claimant to discuss. In addition, the checklist often becomes an unnecessary attentional anchor for the interviewer, causing him to interrupt the claimant and direct her answers toward staying on script. This is problematic because most of the academic literature and the most cutting edge law enforcement practices find that the best form of questioning is open-ended, allowing the person being interviewed to describe things in at most a lightly interrupted narrative form.
Wired Magazine recently published an article on the changes being implemented at the federal level and in some local police departments to the traditional mode of interrogation. The article holds insights for conducting recorded statements. Obviously the stakes are higher in capital criminal cases such as the one profiled in the article, but the lessons apply to all forms of interviewing witnesses. The author reports that a huge problem with modern interviewing is that “standard interrogation technique can be an ineffective tool for gathering lots of useful and accurate information” because many witnesses “clam up.” If the person being interviewed feels like they are being interrogated, they will offer as little information as possible. This is problematic because the purpose of a witness interview, whether of a claimant in a civil case, a suspect in a criminal case, or a third party witness in either case, is to gather as much information as possible. As the article puts it, the more a witness says, “the more that can be checked against the record.”
So how would you go about doing this? It is really quite simple. The gist “is this: If you want accurate information, be as non-accusatorial as possible.” In other words, build rapport with the witness and remember that the purpose of the interview should be “ geared … toward the pursuit of information.” Other interesting findings from current research is that asking witnesses to describe events in reverse chronological order is harder to do when they are lying. It is believed that the increased cognitive load of fabricating a story or facts makes descriptions in reverse chronological order particularly difficult. In addition, when witnesses lie or fabricate they are not able to provide the same level of detail as truth tellers. According to Steven Kleinman, who works with the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, a joint effort between the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon, “No matter how good the cover story is, it’s not going to be as rich as a real-life story.”
The article explains how the new interrogation techniques were put to use to solve a crime in Los Angeles. In that case, a man, Gabriel Campos-Martinez, was suspected of killing his partner, but the evidence was too circumstantial to allow for charges to be brought against him. Just over two years after the crime was committed, two LA detectives again interviewed Campos-Martinez, this time using non-accusatory, rapport-building interview techniques. As a result, the suspect spent 5 hours with the detectives after telling them he only had a short time to speak with them. It seemed “almost like [the suspect] appreciated the chance to talk. As the hours went on, the conversation started to go in unpredictable directions.” He eventually revealed critical details that ultimately led to charges and his conviction for the murder. During the course of the interrogation, the suspect “started to reminisce” about walks he and his partner used to take in the area where the body was discovered, which was new information. In addition, the suspect described a plant that is used to make herbal tea but in greater quantities can be used to incapacitate, which proved crucial to his conviction.
It is possible for claims professionals to accomplish the same thing when taking recorded statements. Build rapport and let the witness talk. There will always be time for wrap-up questions to ensure that the basic identifying information makes it onto the statement. But instead of going through a checklist from the start, it might be better to ask open-ended questions that let the witness open up. Instead of asking a witness if they have hobbies, which is sort of an antiquated term anyway, ask her what does she like to do? Try having the witness start from a point away from the incident and ask them to describe what happened working backwards. Pay attention to the detail provided. The point is that people like to talk when they don’t feel like they are being interrogated. Build rapport. Don’t accuse. Get to the truth (or ferret out the lie).
We are inundated with messages about the opioid crisis in America. According to the CDC 28,000 people died due to opioid overdose in 2014, at least half of which occurred while using prescription painkillers. There is also evidence that heroin use is increasing as prescription opioids become harder to obtain. In fact, the CDC reports that prescription opioid painkiller use is strongest risk factor for heroin addiction. Those in the worker’s compensation field have seen firsthand the devastation addiction to prescription opioids can cause. In addition to the tragic human costs, cases involving long term prescription opioid painkiller use often have high economic costs that include significant lost time and failure to return to work in addition to the cost of the prescriptions themselves. And this doesn’t begin to touch on the cost that are imposed on the social safety net when long term opioid painkiller use turns into permanent disability. The bottom line is that an effective alternative to prescription opioid painkiller use in chronic pain cases would improve lives, improve society, and most importantly save lives.
The Journal of the American Medical Association (“JAMA”) recently published a report addressing whether mindfulness-based stress reduction might be that effective alternative. The report notes that the CDC recommends physicians “try nonpharmacologic and nonopioid therapies first,” before using opioid painkillers. Hence, it is becoming imperative for physicians to explore alternatives to simply prescribing painkillers. According to the report, “limited research indicates that mindfulness meditation for pain management therapy has promise.” For example, a recent study found that adding mindfulness meditation to a standard pain treatment program increased the percentage of patients who reported meaningful pain reduction from 26.6% to 44.9%. Obviously this is a significant finding. Unfortunately, there are no studies that compare mindfulness-based stress reduction directly with opioid use. The report stresses the importance of performing direct comparison, double-blinded, randomized studies to measure the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction compared to prescription opioid painkillers.
So why does mindfulness-based stress reduction appear to help at all? There are a number of reasons, but chief among them is the understanding that “pain is a complex phenomenon involving more than a direct nerve impulse from the affected tissue or limb to the somatic sensory cortex” and that “a person’s thoughts and emotions also play a role in pain perception.” This has helped physicians to focus on treatment modalities that “shift chronic pain treatment from a ‘biomedical disease model’ to a ‘patient-centered’ model focused on ‘patient engagement in daily self-management.’” The key is shift between improved quality of life versus elimination of pain, which is often impossible. This turns the patient’s attention away from pain and disability and toward behavioral and psychological interventions and techniques to improve her quality of life. In the words of a mindfulness meditation study participant, “I felt the pain was there, but I was able to let it go. I didn’t dwell on it so much.”
Whether mindfulness-based stress reduction will prove to be a substitute or an effective alternative to prescription opioid painkillers remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the growing awareness that chronic pain is different from and needs to be treated differently than acute pain is positive. The trend is moving toward interventions in chronic pain patients that focus on learning strategies to cope with their pain which in turn increases their ability to function at higher levels. And higher levels of functioning mean less catastrophizing, less disability, and ultimately, less death. A happy coincidence is that it also means a reduction in worker’s compensation costs.
Any person who spends time in claims has run into files in which a patient with back pain has undergone “provocative discography.” The procedure involves injecting intervertebral discs suspected of causing the claimant’s pain with fluid along with “healthy control” discs. Purportedly, if the claimant feels an increase of pain in the suspected disc compared to the “control” discs, then the suspected disc is confirmed as being the cause of the claimant’s back pain. The problem is threefold. First, studies have determined that provocative discography cannot do what it is supposed to do. It cannot identify “discogenic pain.” Second, studies have definitively concluded that not only is provocative discography an ineffective diagnostic tool but also that it causes the degeneration of injected intervertebral discs to accelerate. Third, a recent study published in The Spine Journal (subscription required) found in a 10 year study that provocative discography performed on persons without back complaints actually led to back pain and surgical intervention. Healthnewsreviews.org has an outstanding piece about the study and the lack of coverage in the health news media. This is important because even today, with knowledge that provocative discography is an ineffective diagnostic tool, 70,000 procedures are performed annually in the United States. Anyone involved in medico-legal claims should read the Healthnewsreviews.org piece. Here are some of the highlights:
Such is the import of this study that an orthopedic surgeon interviewed as part of the article flat out stated:
Perhaps the best summary was provided by another doctor consulted for the article. Steven Atlas, MD, MPH, told Healthnewsreviews.org:
The article is worth reading in its entirety. One hopes that discography and its costs, both direct and indirect, will soon disappear from the health care landscape. In the meantime, claims professionals should expect their IME doctors on back pain cases to be familiar with the study and use it in their reports when treating physicians recommend or actually perform provocative discography and use it to diagnose the cause of back pain and the need for surgery.
Medical Systems recently held a lunch and learn at Lombardi’s Steakhouse in Appleton, Wisconsin at which hand surgery expert Jan Bax, M.D. discussed common hand injuries. During his presentation, Dr. Bax alerted attendees to a recent white paper from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (“AAOS”) that reports a moderate level of medical evidence links computer use to the development of carpal tunnel syndrome (see p. 222). As Dr. Bax pointed out, the paper was published in the last couple of months so its ultimate effect in the worker’s compensation arena is undetermined. Nevertheless, Dr. Bax expressed concern that the paper will lead to renewed carpal tunnel syndrome claims based on repetitive computer use (keyboarding and mouse use). He noted this is especially troublesome because the hand surgery section of the AAOS considers it a settled issue that computer use does not cause carpal tunnel syndrome.
The white paper assigns levels of evidence supporting the various factors that are sometimes alleged to cause carpal tunnel syndrome. The highest level of evidence is “strong,” which requires consistent evidence from two or more high quality studies. The second highest level of evidence is “moderate,” which requires consistent evidence from two or more moderate quality studies or evidence from a single high quality study. This is the level of evidence the AAOS finds for the position that computer use causes carpal tunnel syndrome. The second lowest level of evidence is “limited,” which requires consistent evidence from two or more low quality studies, one moderate study, or insufficient/inconsistent evidence recommending for or against the diagnosis. The lowest level of evidence is “consensus,” which requires that there is no reliable evidence but rather is based on unsupported clinical opinion.
As Dr. Bax noted, finding that moderate evidence supports the link between computer use and carpal tunnel syndrome is troubling because it is actually is a high level of evidence and may sway triers of fact despite the nearly uniform position of actual hand surgery specialists that there is no such causal link. This is especially true given the findings in some of the research cited. Coggon, et al., specifically stated that there was an “absence of association with the use of computer keyboards” and noted this “is also consistent with the findings overally from other research.” The researchers concluded that “obesity and diabetes, and the physical stresses to tissues from the use of hand-held vibratory tools and repeated forceful movements of the wrist and hand, all cause impaired function of the median nerve” but that computer keyboard probably only focuses attention on symptoms without being injurious to the tissues of the wrist. Coggon, et al. seem to support a more nuanced relationship between computer keyboard use and carpal tunnel syndrome than is portrayed in the AAOS white paper. Likewise, Eleftheriou, et al. studied the link between computer keyboard use and carpal tunnel syndrome but related the following disclaimer:
One limitation is related to [the study’s] cross-sectional design which does not allow us to conclude if the association between cumulative exposure to key-board use is of causative nature. The study included workers present when the study was formed, which implies a possible selection bias as is the case in all cross-sectional studies, especially if the study population was affected by high turn-over. It’s a limitation of our study that we don’t have data on actual turn-over of the staff…Further, we didn’t control for possible confounding factors like anthropometric characteristics of the wrist…
Eleftheriou, et al. reported only “a possible association between cumulative exposure to keyboard strokes and the development of [carpal tunnel syndrome]…” They specifically noted that additional studies need to be done to verify their results and to address causality.
The AAOS white paper is a troubling development in carpal tunnel syndrome worker’s compensation cases since it potentially throws into question the settled opinion among hand surgery specialists that keyboard use does not cause carpal tunnel syndrome. As Dr. Bax noted at the recent Medical Systems lunch and learn, it is too early to tell exactly what the effects of the paper will be, though they are not likely to be positive. In the event that the AAOS white paper is cited to support work-related carpal tunnel syndrome cases among keyboard users, it will be critical to choose experts who understand and can explain the limitations of the evidence on which the paper relies. Without an expert who will vigorously question and thoroughly refute the evidence, the AAOS white paper is likely to carry more weight in keyboard-related carpal tunnel syndrome claims than it otherwise should.
Osteoarthritis of the knee is the bane of many worker’s compensation claims. Frequently, an injured worker demonstrates evidence of arthritis but claims an acute event aggravated the condition to the point that it was symptomatic. What can be frustrating for the employer or insurance carrier is the fact that in most cases the arthritis itself was not caused by the employment. Thus, the employer or insurance carrier laments the fact that they are being held responsible for 100% of a condition that would have almost certainly become symptomatic regardless of the acute work-related event. Unfortunately, to date there has been no reliable method to measure whether this is accurate or, if so, when the arthritis would have become symptomatic. However, a recent study suggest we may have technology to do just that.
A group of Finnish and Swedish researchers released “A Novel Method to Simulate the Progression of Collagen Degeneration of Cartilage in the Knee” in which they developed a “degeneration algorithm … combined with computational modeling” that accurately predicted the rate at which knee cartilage would deteriorate based on the weight of patients. The study was conducted on 429 patients under 65 years of age who initially had no radiographic evidence of osteoarthritis (cartilage thinning) in their knees. The subjects were divided into a study group, consisting of patients with a BMI of 35 or higher, considered to be at high risk of developing weight-related osteoarthritis of the knee, and a control group, consisting of patients with a BMI lower than 25, considered to be of low risk for developing weight-related osteoarthritis of the knee. As noted, neither group demonstrated radiographic evidence of osteoarthritis at the beginning of the study nor had any member of either group sustained a knee injury that either prevented them from walking for more than 2 days or required surgical intervention. The 2 groups were then followed for 4 years.
The researchers developed an algorithm to predict the rate at which cartilage loss associated with osteoarthritis would occur based on BMI and other physiological characteristics. In their words, “[t]he algorithm was based on cartilage overloading so that cumulatively accumulated excessive stresses (above failure limit) caused alterations in tissue properties with time.” The researchers then developed a computational program to simulate the expected cartilage loss over four years based on the baseline status of knee cartilage from MRI readings. The accuracy of the algorithm and computational modeling was measured against x-rays taken at the beginning of the study and after 4 years. The results demonstrated the ability of the algorithm and modeling to accurately predict which subjects would experience loss of cartilage associate with osteoarthritis and how much loss each subject would experience. According the study, “[t]he simulated onset and development of osteoarthritis agreed with experimental baseline and 4-year follow-up data.” This lead researchers to conclude that, “[t]he present work provides…an important and groundbreaking step toward developing a rapid and subject-specific diagnostic tool for the simulations of the onset and development of knee osteoarthritis and cartilage degeneration related to excessive chronic overloading due to overweight [sic].”
The implications of this individualized ability to predict the onset of knee arthritis could be significant for worker’s compensation. If the method proves to be accurate and reliable in subsequent studies, it could be used in the same manner as occupational hearing tests to measure a baseline condition and determine if the subsequent condition is related to the normal progression of the disease versus an occupational aggravation. Likewise, the method would offer the potential to calculate, based on an employee’s physical condition on the date of injury, the likelihood that the alleged employment-related event aggravated the underlying arthritis and if so how much the employment-related event is responsible for. This would finally allow for an accurate accounting of what portion of a preexisting degenerative condition is related to an industrial event and what portion is due to the natural progression of the condition. While this would admittedly be at best a distant possibility, it is nevertheless a possibility. Hence, the study and its future applications are worth following.
Pain. We all experience it, but what is pain? Certainly pain has a nociceptive component, meaning when we experience injury our nerves send a message to our brain that results in the state of awareness that may be best characterized by the word “ouch.” This is the type of pain that seems best controlled with traditional analgesics such as prescription opioids. Pain may also be neuropathic, meaning it is not the resulted of an injured tissue sending a classic pain signal to the brain but rather is the result of a damaged nerve that is sending abnormal signals to the brain due to the injured state of the nerve itself. This is why persons with neuropathic pain experience paresthesia and hyperesthesia rather than the typical stabbing or aching pain that would associated with physical injury to a muscle, bone, or joint. Chronic pain also differs from neuropathic and nociceptive pain in that it appears to be a learned cognitive response to a patho-anatomic abnormality that may or may not be causing actual nociceptive pain. Further complicating the range of pain that we experience is psychological pain; that is the somatization of psychological distress.
A new Psychological Science study (subscription required) throws a new wrench into the pain picture: persons in financial distress who are also in pain feel higher levels of pain than those are not experiencing economic distress. According to the study,
Interestingly, the authors concluded that “the psychological experience of lacking control helped generate the causal link from economic insecurity to physical pain.” This offers some hope that addressing the feeling of lacking control could help to lower the perceived experience of pain.
In the claims context, the experience of pain is a major cost-driver. Persons who experience pain will continue to seek treatment for injuries that have otherwise resolved or stabilized. In addition, persons who experience pain often miss time from work and have other disability-related costs. What complicates the apparent relationship of economic insecurity and pain in the claims context is that persons with claims often experience economic insecurity related to the claimed injuries. For example, an employee suffers a work-related knee injury and has to miss time from work. Even a conceded claim can cause financial distress as compensation benefits are paid out at 2/3 of average weekly wage and the injury may force the employee to miss overtime they expected to work. Matters get worse when a claimant is cut off from benefits but claims ongoing injury and an inability to return to work. In many such cases, claimants lack the savings or other sources of income replacement to weather the economic storm.
The problem from a claims perspective is that the economic situation of the claimant is outside the purview of the claim. For example, if a claimant alleges a work-related low back injury and the insurer questions whether the condition is in fact related to the employment, the insurer will have the claimant undergo an independent medical examination. If the independent medical expert concludes that the claimant’s condition is not related to her employment, the insurer will stop paying benefits to the claimant. At the same time, if the claimant is under work restrictions from her treating physician, she will not be able to return to work. As a result, she will lose her temporary total disability benefits while simultaneously having no recourse to income from her employment. If the Psychological Science study tells us anything, it is that losing temporary total disability benefits without other sources of income or income replacement will likely make the claimant’s physical condition worse. This can be a particularly fraught situation if the claimant is suffering from a degenerative condition that would wax and wane in severity even without economic distress. The study suggests that such a condition could be appreciated as being significantly worse in a claimant who is in economic distress. From a cost perspective, this is a problem because it will almost certainly lead the treating physician to conclude that conservative therapy failed to treat the condition. Concluding that conservative therapy failed often leads to a referral to a surgeon or the recommendation of surgery. All of a sudden, a condition that should be manageable with periodic noninvasive treatment and over-the-counter analgesics, becomes an intractable problem for which surgery is seen as the only option. And surgery is expensive.
If a claim reaches this point, it may be fairly stated that the reason conservative therapy failed and that surgery is being proposes is not due to the condition itself, but rather to the claimant’s financial distress which renders a normally tolerable condition into an intolerable one. The claimant’s financial distress is obviously related to the claim, but is not something over which the claims professional has control. The claims professional is not obliged to follow the recommendations of the IME doctor, but it would be highly unusual for a claims professional to continue to award benefits when she does not have to. The claims professional is not responsible for the claimant beyond the four corners of the claim. Except the decisions of the claims professional within the claim can have, as the study shows, consequences outside the four corners of the claim that can seep back into the claim. As such, it seems prudent for claims handlers to be aware, even if they have little control or choice, that the decision to deny benefits to a claimant can have the perverse effect of making the claim worse (from a cost perspective) than it would otherwise have been. At least then it will not be a surprise when the person with ordinary degenerative disc disease ends up with a fusion, failed back syndrome, and a claim for permanent total disability benefits.
There are certain medical procedures that are so common in worker’s compensation that we don’t give them a second thought. Partial meniscectomy is among them. Most people assume that an employee with a torn meniscus who is experiencing catching and locking in their knee should have a partial meniscectomy to treat the symptoms, regardless of whether we think the meniscus tear is work-related. Turns out that our assumption might be wrong.
The Annals of Internal Medicine published results from a study (subscription required) which found that arthroscopic partial meniscectomy is ineffective for relieving catching and locking symptoms in the knee. The study was conducted on a group of patients with medial knee pain who had confirmed meniscus tears without evidence of arthritis. The participants in the study were randomly assigned to either the treatment group, which received the partial meniscectomy, or a control group, who received a sham arthroscopy. Participants were not aware of which group they were in to control possible bias.
The results of the study were surprising because in every reported measure, the patients undergoing the sham procedure reported fewer mechanical symptoms post-surgery. The most impressive results were among those patients reporting that they were symptom free following the procedure. Among this group, only 28% of the participants undergoing the actual partial meniscectomy reported being symptom-free while 41% of the participants who underwent the sham procedure reported being symptom-free. The study’s authors were quick to note, however, that trauma-related meniscus tears causing mechanical symptoms in persons under 35 do respond well to partial meniscectomy. On the other hand, they pointed out that “in a degenerative knee, seemingly similar symptoms may not even be caused by the meniscal tear - more likely they are a reflection of the overall deterioration of the knee and prone to increase as arthritis develops further.”
In the worker’s compensation context, the dispute is typically whether a meniscus tear is traumatic or degenerative. Regardless, the ineffectiveness and the possibility that the symptoms might be “a reflection of the overall deterioration of the knee and prone to increase as arthritis develops further” is a good reason to tread cautiously when an employee is diagnosed with a meniscus tear. If the employee’s meniscus tear is degenerative in nature, there is a strong likelihood that a partial meniscectomy will have a temporary benefit at best and in the long run will not ameliorate or slow the progression of degenerative arthritis. Hence, a meniscus tear in an older worker that is deemed to be work-related is highly likely to become an arthritic knee that will need to be replaced. And despite the fact that it is bad medicine and bad science, the arthritis is likely to be blamed on the meniscus tear even though the arthritis was probably the problem in the first place. Hence, it behooves every claims professional to take a serious look at meniscus claims and to defend them vigorously now that we know the proposed surgery may very well not work and may very well lead to additional (more costly) claims.
Pain is a problem that is frequently treated with painkillers. As we are all aware, this has led to a significant problem with addiction to and overdose from opioid painkillers in this country. The reasons for the crisis in prescription opioid addiction and overdose are myriad and have been discussed extensively here and elsewhere. This post is not about the problem, but instead about an opportunity to address it.
The NY Times recently posted an article about the potential to harness the placebo effect to help treat pain which offers an intriguing possibility in the struggle to treat pain without causing addiction and overdose. As Jo Marchant reports, “even when we take a real painkiller, a big chunk of the effect is delivered not by any direct chemical action, but by our expectation that that drug will work. Studies show that widely used painkillers like morphine, buprenorphine and tramadol are markedly less effective if we don’t know we’re taking them.” In fact, placebo effects are so powerful “that drug manufacturers are finding it hard to beat them.” Hence, Marchant suggests that more research should be done to figure out if “prescription” placebos could be used to treat pain.
Marchant recognizes the difficulty with placebos: namely that the effect is generally observed in clinical trials where individuals don’t know if they are getting the active drug or a placebo. In controlled studies, patients expect they will receive a drug that will improve their condition even though they know they might in fact get a placebo. This, as Marchant notes, appears to be a key component of the placebo effect: “[t]he greater our belief that a treatment will work, the better we’ll respond.” There have, however, been studies in which patients knowingly taking placebos still reported statistically significant improvement in their reported level of pain. This leads Marchant to ask the eminently reasonable question, “[w]ith placebo responses in pain so high – and the risks of drugs so severe – why not prescribe a course of ‘honest’ placebos for those who wish to try it, before proceeding, if necessary, to an active drug?”
Pain is ubiquitous in our society and, when chronic, often proves disabling. We know from experience that prescribing opioid painkillers is not the answer to the problem of pain. Perhaps it is time for those of us in the medico-legal world to use whatever muscle we have and advocate for change. A good place to start would be the use of “honest” placebos to treat pain.
Mild traumatic brain injury claims may well be the most vexing for claims professionals. They usually involve comparatively minor incidents for which little objective testing exists and they are frequently entangled with psychological co-morbidities which further complicate matters. In addition, the chief method to diagnose and assess mild traumatic brain injury involves subjective reports and evaluations of cognitive symptoms and functioning, making these claims particularly susceptible to exaggeration, malingering, and fraud.
The mild traumatic brain injury paradox is that those who are often at greatest risk of reinjury are often the most eager to return to the risky activity while those with the lowest risk of reinjury are most concerned about returning even to the activities of everyday life. Hence, the competitive athlete will mask symptoms in an effort to return to the playing field as quickly as possible while the truck driver who pulled an overhead trailer door onto his head may complain of cognitive symptoms for weeks or even months to avoid returning to work. The subjective nature of diagnosis and assessment makes it difficult for medical professionals to know when the athlete is not ready to return to competitive play and simultaneously when the truck driver is ready to return to work.
Unfortunately, recent research muddies the water and makes the development of an objective test for traumatic brain injury all the more important. In a study presented to the American Radiological Society, researchers from the Medical College of Wisconsin found that persons suffering from mild traumatic brain injuries demonstrated neuropathology on MRI scans days after their cognitive functioning returned to baseline. This is a potential problem because it is generally accepted that injured neurons subjected to a second trauma before they are healed are at risk of significant and permanent injury; further, the traditional mechanism for assessing when a mild traumatic brain injury has resolved is a subjective assessment that the injured person’s cognitive functioning has returned to baseline.
And as noted above, those who are most eager to return to the activity that caused the mild traumatic brain injury are often the most susceptible to suffering another head injury. If they return before they are fully healed from the first injury, the second injury could have devastating effects. This further exemplifies why it is so critical to develop a reliable and rapid objective test to assess the presence of mild traumatic brain injury. As an added bonus, a reliable and rapid objective test would have the felicitous effect of being able to catch those trying to use a mild traumatic brain injury to stay out of work or to collect a financial windfall in a personal injury action.
At Medical Systems, we don’t often see separated shoulder cases, known to medical professionals as acromioclavicular (“AC”) joint dislocations, because the injuries are acute and painful. Hence, there usually isn’t much dispute about whether the injuries are work/accident-related or not. Still, these injuries happen at workplaces and in personal injury accidents. They are painful and, if severe, usually treated surgically (read, “expensively”).
New research suggests that this is probably the wrong approach. A recent study in the Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma found that surgical repair of moderate and severe AC joint dislocations did not result in improved outcomes versus non-surgical repair, bucking what has been considered common knowledge among doctors. Not only did surgery not improve patient outcomes, but patients that did not have surgery actually recovered faster. In fact, 75% of the non-surgical patients returned to work within 3 months of the injury while only 43% of the surgical patients did. According to the study’s author, "For severe AC joint dislocations, surgery is the common practice but there's not much evidence to suggest this is actually the best treatment." An additional benefit is that those treated non-surgically (use of a sling and rehabilitation) suffered much lower rates of complication. The only noticeable benefit to surgery was that the AC joint appeared more normal after surgery.
One hopes that the medical community will pay attention to the findings and stop recommending surgery for every moderate to severe AC joint dislocation. It would seem that this would be the best result for both claimants with AC joint dislocations and claims professionals managing their claims.
Pulmonary claims in worker’s compensation can be difficult if there is not a discrete release of harmful airborne particulate matter or chemicals that is well-documented. In cases with longer exposure time or with exposure to common particulate matter such as ‘dust’ or other materials that may cause pulmonary irritation, finding a plausible non-industrial cause for the pulmonary injury or condition can be both challenging and vital to the claim’s defense. However, a UK study reveals a potential source for non-industrial exposure to harmful particulate matter and vapors: home improvement projects. According to Medical News Today, the study found that “peak concentrations of potentially harmful ultrafine particles reach up to 4,000 times local background levels when undertaking building activities such as drilling.” The authors note that do-it-yourself (“DIY”) home improvement has increased in recent years and continues to grow in the United Kingdom, a trend also common to the United States.
In the United States, OSHA mandates worker’s on construction sites be provided with personal protective equipment such as respirator masks when necessary to protect employees from harmful particulate matter and vapors. OSHA also requires that employers use effective engineering controls such as confinement and ventilation to limit workers’ exposure to harmful particulate matter. Unfortunately, individuals who engage in home improvement projects are not required to use personal protective equipment or engineering controls to protect themselves. Thus, home improvement projects, especially those involving drilling, cutting, sanding, or solvent use can be a significant source of pulmonary exposure to harmful airborne particulate matter or vapors.
In the worker’s compensation context, the rise in DIY home improvement is a potential non-industrial cause of pulmonary injuries and conditions. Claim handlers in pulmonary claims should ask claimants about DIY home improvement project history to see if there is a potential exposure source outside the workplace for their problems. Also, claim handlers may wish to consider interviewing co-workers since many people who engage in DIY home improvement projects like to talk about them. Prompt surveillance could also be useful because larger scale DIY projects often generate construction waste that is at least temporarily stored at the home and is often visible from the street. Finally, independent pulmonary experts should be instructed to ask claimants about their DIY home improvement project history if they are not already doing so. Dry-walling a bedroom surely would be more likely to cause pulmonary problems than exposure to the everyday amount of dust present on a loading dock in a warehouse (or wherever the exposure is alleged to have occurred).
Spinal cord injuries are devastating. The U.S. experiences approximately 12,000 spinal cord injuries per year in which the injured person survives the initial accident. For those who survive the initial accident, the road forward is physically arduous, psychologically taxing, and financially burdensome. A spinal cord injury patient can expect to spend well over a month in hospitals and in-patient rehabilitation (and sometimes considerably longer dependent on the severity of the injury and whether there are concomitant cognitive impairments or other comorbidities). In addition, the lifetime costs of spinal cord injuries are extensive, having a present day value ranging from $4,540,000 for a 20-year-old patient with high tetraplegia (spinal cord injury at C1-C4) to $1,460,000 for a 60-year-old patient with paraplegia. The occupational effects are profound, with only 35% of spinal cord injury patients able to achieve a similar pre-injury level of employment 20 years post-injury. Obviously, the costs to employers and worker’s compensation carriers in work-related spinal cord injury claims are enormous and usually lifelong. The costs of spinal cord injuries are massive in the liability context as well. Since the two most common causes of spinal cord injuries are motor vehicle crashes and falls, liability and worker’s compensation claims are relatively common when spinal cord injuries occur.
Certainly no one did more to raise awareness of spinal cord injuries than Christopher Reeve, who suffered a spinal cord injury causing high tetraplegia (C1-C2) after falling from a horse in 1995. Periodically high profile athlete suffer spinal cord injuries that thrust the issue back into the national spotlight. In 2010, Rutgers football player Eric LeGrande sustained a spinal cord injury during a game against army that initially left him paralyzed from the neck down. In October 1995, Travis Roy was just 11 seconds into his first shift in his first game as a hockey player for Boston University when he crashed head-first into the boards and suffered a spinal cord injury that also paralyzed him from the neck down. More recently, Olympic swimmer and multiple gold medal-winning swimmer Amy Van Dyken suffered a spinal cord injury away from athletics in June 2014 when she fell off the all-terrain vehicle she was driving and down a 5-7 foot embankment. The accident injured her spinal cord at T11 and left her paralyzed from the waist down.
These famous athletes and celebrities periodically remind us of both the risk and devastating consequences of spinal cord injury. Fortunately, progress is being made in managing the post-injury effects of spinal cord injury. The most frequently reported-on developments typically involve bionic exoskeletons that help the paralyzed person move their limbs. However, recently medical researchers have been making strides in using electrical stimulation to allow the injured patient voluntarily move paralyzed limbs. In recently reported research, external electrodes were placed over 5 patients’ spinal columns who have suffered from paraplegia for at least two years. The electrodes in combination with the drug buspirone allowed the patients to move their limbs under stimulation, which was not unexpected. What was remarkable is that the patients retained the ability to move their legs even without electrical stimulation after 4 weeks of treatment. As lead researcher Prof. V. Reggie Edgerton noted, "The fact that they regained voluntary control so quickly must mean that they had neural connections that were dormant, which we reawakened." The findings are considered remarkable because the medical and scientific community had accepted that persons with complete paralysis “no longer had any neural connections in the spinal area.;” suggesting that it may be possible to regain motor function without regenerating spinal neurons or using an exoskeleton system.
This research along with the mind-boggling progress that is being made with patient-controlled exoskeleton devices is changing the landscape for spinal cord injury patients. These developments are welcome news for patients, their families, and society alike. As noted above, the occupational and medical costs of spinal cord injuries are enormous. Anything that can return function to patients has the potential to minimize the occupational impact and long-term medical expenses of spinal cord injuries, which is good news for the worker’s compensation and civil liability systems as well. Spinal cord injuries are among the most costly injuries to everyone involved. Improving outcomes in spinal cord injuries will benefit an extraordinary number of individual lives and also the institutions set up to absorb the costs.
Medical News Today has an article on exciting research in the pharmacological management of chronic pain. The research, published in Neuron, found that persons with a particular genetic profile experience considerably less low back pain than the general population. Such persons have a gene variant that causes them to produce less of the protein BH4 than normal. Researchers postulated that BH4 is at least partly responsible for the development of chronic nerve pain. To test the hypothesis, they engineered mice to overproduce BH4 and found these mice were hypersensitive to pain even without injury. They then engineered mice that produced no BH4 and found those mice to have considerably less sensitive to pain than normal.
The real breakthrough, however, was in the researchers’ next step: pharmacological control of BH4. "We wanted to use pharmacologic means to get the same effect as the gene variant," says Alban Latremoliere, PhD, of Boston Children's Kirby Center, who led the current study. As Medical News Today reports, the researchers caused a peripheral nerve injury in laboratory mice and then “blocked BH4 production using a specifically designed drug that targets sepiapterin reductase (SPR), a key enzyme that makes BH4. The drug reduced the pain hypersensitivity induced by the nerve injury (or accompanying inflammation) but did not affect nociceptive pain--the protective pain sensation that helps us avoid injury.” This could be a hugely important development in the pharmacological management of chronic pain in people as the method would offer an option that could effectively manage pain without any of the addictive or other deleterious effects of narcotic pain medication.
Anyone who has spent any time in worker’s compensation claims knows that many, many claims are fraught with problems that aren’t wholly medical or psychological, but that are problems arising out of the workplace injury that nonetheless impact the claim. An apt term for these sorts of problems is “psychosocial difficulties.” Psychosocial difficulties “refer to impairments of body functions under central nervous system control, activity limitations, and participation restrictions such as concentrating, sleeping, maintaining energy levels, anxiety, making and maintaining relationships and keeping a job.” When we encounter a worker’s compensation claim we tend to focus on “medicals and indemnity” because worker’s compensation laws require insurers and self-insurers to pay medical expenses and indemnity expenses and not much else. The problem with this narrow focus is that a worker’s compensation claimant is a human being that lives in a particular psychosocial milieu. Psychosocial difficulties arise because of the “interaction of the health condition, environmental and personal factors.” The fact is that when a worker’s compensation claim is made, claims administrators may be authorizing payments for medical expenses and indemnity expenses, but the path that the claim takes is driven by the interaction of the health condition, the personal, and the environmental, which may include factors beyond the strict purview of worker’s compensation laws. Although extralegal, these other factors may have a profound impact on the nature of the claim and whether it can be administered effectively.
Common examples of “extralegal” factors include such things as financial security, access to secondary income, family stability, addiction, intelligence, etc. In the world of brain injuries and conditions, caregivers and medical practitioners have begun to realize psychosocial difficulties “are common across brain disorders” which “challenges the premise that the medical diagnosis has to be the driver or care.” In the context of brain injuries and disorders, “what people really care about is to be able to continue with their lives.” Hence, approaches to care which focus on helping them “continue with their lives” have been found to be effective. The bottom line is that “the difficulties people with health conditions face in their lives do not only relate to their health conditions but also to personal factors and the context in which they live.” The experience of injury and disability is likewise personal and driven by individual circumstances rather than being uniform across injury types. This impacts everything from treatment response to recovery to motivation to return to work. Hence, in two otherwise similarly situated persons with work-related meniscus tears, one returns to work within a few weeks of surgery while the other person takes many months to recover and experiences progressively increasing complaints ultimately leading to a total knee replacement.
When a person is injured, we consider the condition to be a medical one. When operating from the cognitive modality, we then assume that treating the injury will heal the person. However, the medical aspect of an injury is just one aspect. Injury, though physical or mental in nature, has myriad aspects that affect the life of the injured person. Often the psychosocial aspects of injury are more difficult for an injured person to manage or get over than the actual physical injury itself. When this is the case, claims become difficult because doctors tend to throw up their hands and say they can do nothing more for the person. From a claims perspective, this often triggers an attempt to shut the claim down, or at least end payment of medical expenses. The problem is that even when “medical interventions are exhausted…, interventions targeting [psychosocial disorders] can contribute tremendously to achieving a fulfilled life…” Thus claims administrators often find themselves in the difficult and unenviable position of not having anything to offer to an injured worker who clearly has problems related (in their mind or in reality) to the work injury. The position is difficult because the injured worker will often blame their condition on the worker’s compensation carrier and seek further benefits out of the belief, misguided or not, that continued receipt of worker’s compensation benefits can somehow make her whole again or at least offer the hope of remedy from the effects of the workplace injury. Frequently these “effects” are not primarily medical but instead are a result of the cascade of psychosocial problems that follow injury, interruption of employment, and diminished physical functioning.
One way to address the psychosocial difficulties is to allow injured worker’s to provide narratives of what is going on in their lives as part of the claims process. While this information, or at least pieces of it, often comes out during the course of a claim, it is usually the product of defensive behavior most commonly uttered in frustration, i.e. “but how am I going to pay my rent?” Instead, it might be beneficial to seek out the information actively, to ask claimants what is going on in their lives and how the injury is affecting them. Certainly it will provide good will and may assuage some of the claimant’s anger, but it also could have the benefit of figuring out what is really going on and how that will impact the life of the claim. If a person is frustrated because they can no longer perform an activity, perhaps a claims administrator would be able to direct her to a simple and cost-effective means by which the person can improve or restore their level of function. It can only help a claims administrator to understand what really matters to the injured worker.
It very well may be that the claims administrator will not be able to do much about issues that fall outside the purview of worker’s compensation; nevertheless, it cannot hurt to find out what all of the issues a claimant is facing and learning this information may help a claims administrator arrive at creative and effective solutions in what otherwise seem to be intractable claims. In addition, the earlier the discussion of psychosocial difficulties takes place, the earlier the claimant, with or without help from the claims administrator, can begin to address the difficulties. The sooner psychosocial difficulties are addressed, the sooner claimants are likely to accept their physical condition and move forward in adapting to it. This has the potential to reduce recovery times and to mitigate against the worst effects of disability, thereby potentially lowering both perceived and actual levels of permanent impairment. The law tells us what we have to do, but sometimes doing a little more can go a long way to making potentially problematic claims manageable.
Claims with chronic whiplash symptoms that develop after a low-speed motor vehicle accident are often difficult. The defense points to imaging studies that do not demonstrate evidence of pathology. The plaintiff points to a prior history of normal health without any neck problems or pain complaints. Each side points to their evidence and asks the jury (if the case goes to trial) to reach their preferred conclusion:
The defense will point to the low speed of the impact to demonstrate that their position is more credible, i.e. the speed was so low no person could have suffered more than a minor, temporary neck strain. The plaintiff will try to counter this with evidence that the speed of the striking vehicle at impact cannot accurately convey the forces transmitted to the plaintiff’s cervical spinal column and musculature. In truth, there is little direct evidence that supports either side’s position in these claims.
That may be changing, though. Researchers at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University have uncovered what may be objective evidence supporting the claims of chronic whiplash injuries that arise in approximately 25% of all rear-end motor vehicle accidents. Specifically, the researchers found evidence of fatty deposits that accumulated in persons who went on to suffer chronic whiplash injuries in fat and water MRI scans taken within one to two weeks after the initial injury. Specifically, the MRI scans demonstrated “large amounts of fat infiltrating the patients’ neck muscles, indicating rapid atrophy.” Lead Investigator James Elliott stated that “we believe this represents an injury that is more severe than what might be expected from a typical low-speed car crash.”
The significance of the findings, if replicated, could be great for personal injury claims involving allegations of chronic whiplash injuries. If the water-fat ratio in neck muscles becomes an accepted objective test of whiplash injury chronicity, it could take the guesswork out of these claims. This of course seems like it would be a boon to plaintiffs’ claims; however, the defense would benefit also because it would limit chronic whiplash injury claims to those with objective evidence of injury. In short, it could potentially provide definitive evidence of which claims are legitimate and which claims are not. A residual beneficial effect for both sides would be more effective treatment. As Elliott notes, chronic whiplash patients “may require a more concerted effort for pain management from their physician and help from a psychologist.” Better treatment started sooner would be good for everyone involved in whiplash claims.
Lately it seems like we are stuck in a feedback loop: yet another study has found a common treatment modality for acute low back pain to be much less effective than assumed. In this case, medical researchers found that low dose oral corticosteroids (i.e. prednisone) did not improve pain and offered only modest functional improvement among patients suffering from acute sciatica due to a herniated lumbar disk. According to lead author Harley Goldberg, DO, a spine care specialist at Kaiser Permanente's San Jose Medical Center, "[t]hese findings suggest that a short course of oral steroids (prednisone) is unlikely to provide much benefit for patients with sciatica due to a herniated disk in the lower back.” Researchers also found that “oral steroids did not reduce the likelihood of undergoing surgery in the year following steroid treatment.” Given the apparently modest benefits of oral steroid treatment for acute sciatica and the known deleterious effects of negative treatment history, it would seem prudent for researchers to verify the results of the study as soon as possible. Otherwise we will all be stuck paying for treatment that doesn’t work and could possibly render later treatment modalities less effective.
Cogito ergo sum. These words of Descartes are more commonly known to English speakers as “I think therefore I am.” But what have they to do with medical treatment or medico-legal claims? Quite a bit actually. Descartes is famous among philosophers (a relative sort of fame) for arguing that the mind and the body are distinct entities. We see evidence of this intellectual approach in our distinction between the biological and the psychological. Take brain injuries as an example. We distinguish between what we consider to be organic, neurological injuries from the psychological effects of injury. Hence the distinction between post-concussion syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder. The belief in dualism is extended into the legal realm also, where we have higher standards for proving mental only worker’s compensation injuries than mental injuries in worker’s compensation that arise out of a physical trauma. But is our insistence on this dualism, that mind and body are separate entities, valid?
Much research suggests that our conception of mind and body as separate entities is not so clear cut as we would like to believe. A good example of why we should be wary of separating the psychological from the physical involves the placebo effect. Another example involves treatment history. A group of researchers from German universities and Oxford University authored a 2014 study in which they found that treatment history experience has an astonishingly large effect on subsequent treatment, even when the type of treatment changed. In their study they gave patients analgesic medication delivered through a patch and then later switched to a different analgesic medication delivered through a topical cream. They found that those who responded positively to the first treatment also responded positively to the second treatment. More significantly, the authors found that those who responded negatively to the first treatment also responded negatively to the second treatment despite being given a different medication with a different delivery mechanism.
The findings are significant because the study “results may … challenge step care approaches in which treatment failure has to precede the prescription of next-in-line interventions.” The treatment carryover effect could have a big impact on problematic claims where acute injuries become chronic condition and nothing seems to help. As the authors note, “treatment experiences are ubiquitous in clinical care, particularly in patients suffering from chronic diseases. Carry-over effects might therefore be particularly relevant in chronic conditions where treatments often fail repetitively and negative treatment experiences accumulate along the course of the disease.” The authors suggest that targeted therapy, whether explicit psychological counseling or more implicit methods, could be used to address and attempt to overcome negative treatment history.
The study demonstrates that our minds and bodies are not as separate as we sometimes like to think they are. This can be frustrating when administering medico-legal claims because we want concrete answers. We want diagnostic images to have a one-to-one correlation with physical complaints. We want to know that if someone is prescribed a medicine, that it will work. Unfortunately, medical science tells us that the healing and treatment process is more complicated. While the treatment history study demonstrates the unpredictability of the healing process, it does offer learning opportunities. At a minimum, if we see a failed treatment history we then know that the likelihood of the next intervention working is diminished. In addition, knowing the effects of treatment history can provide a reason to have claimants undergo independent medical examinations. Once a pattern of failed treatment history develops, an independent medical examination may be worthwhile to attempt to halt the seemingly endless spiral of failed treatments.
The business of sorting out what is organic or biological from what is psychological is messy and probably futile. Perhaps it is time that we put Descartes to rest and start thinking of the mind and body as inextricably linked, so inextricably linked that they are not in effect different. Ego sum. That’s it. In the claims experience, this should help us deal with and understand the myriad responses to similar injuries that different claimants have.
Medical News Today reports on a significant new study (fee or subscription required) of what causes episodes of acute low back pain. Critically, the study’s authors concluded that most physical and psychosocial triggers of acute low back pain can be modified. Per Medical News Today, some of the findings include:
Unusually, the study “also found that age was a factor in triggering back pain when lifting heavy loads - with younger people being significantly more likely to suffer an episode of acute low back pain after such activity than older people.” This certainly will be counterintuitive for claims administrators and attorneys in the worker’s compensation field as conventional wisdom suggests older age is directly proportional to low back injuries rather than the inverse as was found in the study. Regardless, the most important thing is to utilize knowledge from the study to reduce episodes of acute low back pain in the workplace. Manuela Ferreira, lead author stated the matter succinctly:
Our findings enhance knowledge of low back pain triggers and will assist the development of new prevention programs that can reduce suffering from this potentially disabling condition.
Christopher Tidball has a good piece at propertycasualty360.com on strategies to curb the rising cost of bodily injury claims. As Tidball notes, bodily injury claims continue to rise at rates faster than inflation. He focuses on taking proactive steps on the front end of claims to ensure that a complete investigation is performed so that damages do not get out of hand without the claims professional’s awareness. A few suggestions are particularly useful as these investigation techniques sometimes fall under the radar:
Perhaps the most useful suggestion is to pay exceptionally close attention to the actual medical bills. Specifically, Tidball notes that coding is frequently used to increase reimbursement. In a telling example of how coding can be manipulated to drive up costs,
Consider a basic lumber MRI with and without contrast. A provider may bill 72148 and 72149, which would be appropriate for these as individual diagnostic tests. However, when they are conducted together, the appropriate code should be 72158, which is the bundled code [and will result in a lower overall bill]. (Parenthetical and emphasis added).
In addition, Tidball reports that using fee schedules or benchmarks to evaluation medical bills will help to contain costs and keep bodily injury expenses reasonable and under control.
The article is short, but provides some useful strategies for controlling costs in bodily injury claims. As is the case with most claims management, the key is to get in front of the claim from the beginning. Conducting thorough background checks on all parties involved and carefully examining billing codes and reimbursement rates are some strategies that will help claims professionals get in front and stay in front.
A recent development finds an alternative to postoperative pain management in knee replacement surgery that appears to offer more effective pain relief and potentially speedier recovery. Researchers found that when they injected “a newer long-acting numbing medicine called liposomal bupivacaine into the tissue surrounding the knee during surgery…[p]atients had pain relief for up to two days after surgery and better knee function compared with the traditional method." One of the study’s authors noted that “many patients were able to walk comfortably within hours after surgery.”
It is estimated that more than half of American adults diagnosed with knee arthritis will have a knee replacement at some point. Given the prevalence of knee replacement surgery both in the general patient and worker’s compensation patient populations, any development that can improve pain relief and increase early knee function could have a profound impact. Prescription pain reliever abuse continues to vex society and intraoperative techniques that can reduce the need for postoperative narcotic pain relief can only help the problem. In addition, faster restoration of knee function has the potential to speed rehabilitation and end of healing. If this new technique fulfills its early promise, it could have a significant and positive effect on reducing costs and recovery time of knee replacements. In the worker’s compensation setting, this would be a welcome development.
Andreas Goebel, a lecturer in molecular and clinical pharmacology at the University of Liverpool, has an article at The Conversation about an exciting development in the understanding of how chronic pain works, which offers possible insight into treating Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (“CRPS”), among other chronic pain conditions. Historically, CRPS has been considered primarily a brain problem. The article points out that recent research suggests autoantibodies are implicated in CRPS by “binding to peripheral tissues, prompting sensory nerves to misfire.” The working theory is that trauma, even minor trauma, induces inflammation which causes the binding/misfiring sequence and this in turn causes the central nervous system to become “wound up.” Once the central nervous system is wound up, it malfunctions, causing the unusual and often intractable symptoms of CRPS. As Goebel reports, the discovery of autoantibodies’ role in pain development is important because “there are treatment methods … designed to reduce or remove antibodies,” which may well prove effective in treating CRPS, especially if treatment is initiated early in the progression of the disease. These findings could prove important as claims involving CRPS typically have high disability and medical expenses and are difficult to process and close in a timely manner. Any effective treatment options would have the potential to change CRPS claims processing radically for the better.
Too often we associate health and well-being with physical, or bodily, health, forgetting that we are creatures of mind. In many ways our mental health and well-being are more important than our physical health. Not long ago we reported on research demonstrating that well-being was more important in predicting workplace absence than physical health. Now Employers Health, an Ohio-based employer coalition,has data demonstrating just how significant mental health and well-being is to the workplace: 2 in 5 U.S. worker’s report missing work due to depression. Each episode costs employers an average of 10 workdays due to depression. Medical researchers estimate that depression costs employers $100 billion annually, including $44 billion in lost productivity. This really is a staggering figure when one considers that the total costs to employers related to musculoskeletal disease has been estimated to be approximately $130 billion.
Of course the million, or in this case, billion dollar question is what, if anything, can employers do to lower the costs of employee depression? Most importantly, research “suggests every one dollar invested by employers in enhanced depression care yields approximately three dollars for the company in the form of productivity gains by employees.” Hence, employers will likely reap economic benefit from ensuring that employees have access to adequate mental health care and support. In addition, mental health diagnoses, including depression, continue to carry a stigma that makes it harder for many employees to admit when they are having a problem and to seek appropriate treatment, which in turn affects performance negatively and leads to workplace absences. Employers can, and many do, have proactive programs to ensure that employees are aware of the confidential support services available to them and that employees understand that there is no stigma attached to using such support services. Continuing to promote the psychological health of employees and to publicize the programs available to help employees maintain their psychological well-being can go a long way to reducing the stigma of mental health issues and reduce the associated costs for employers.
Yet another reason to quit smoking: smokers are three times more likely to suffer chronic back pain than non-smokers (subscription required), according to Northwestern University Feinberg Medical School researchers. Interestingly, the researchers found the link between smoking and increased back pain is in the brain and not the back. The lead author of the study noted that smoking “affects the way the brain responds to back pain and seems to make individuals less resilient to an episode of pain.” Researchers found that two areas of the brain are critical in to developing chronic pain (nucleus accumbens and medial prefrontal cortex, NAc-mPFC). As researchers reported, “That circuit was very strong and active in the brains of smokers … but we saw a dramatic drop in this circuit's activity in smokers who … quit smoking during the study, so when they stopped smoking, their vulnerably to chronic pain also decreased.”
Smoking is frequently a vexing component of claims involving back problems. We know smoking can predispose persons to back problems and significantly reduces the likelihood that back surgery will succeed. This study demonstrates that smoking also changes the way the brain behaves, which appears to make the physical problems worse. Claim handlers and medical professionals should exercise whatever power they have to convince persons with back problems or injuries to quit smoking immediately. While smoking is a personal choice, worker’s compensation premiums should not underwrite the costs of that choice when, for example, a minor back strain becomes chronic, intractable, and expensive to treat because of a person's decision to smoke.
Medical News Today reports on an interesting development in treatment of noise-induced hearing loss. Researchers from the University of Michigan and Harvard Medical School used gene therapy to reverse partial hearing loss in mice. The mice’s genes were manipulated to increase production of a protein (NT3) necessary to keep the connection between the ear’s hair cells and the nerve cells that communicate with the brain “super-fast,” also called a “ribbon synapse.” Exposure to noise and normal aging can damage the ribbon synapse, leading to hearing loss. By increasing production of the protein NT3, researchers were able to repair damage to ribbon synapses and restore hearing.
This is exciting news for anyone handling worker’s compensation claims because hearing loss claims plague myriad employers. Researchers noted that rather than pursuing gene therapy in human subjects, the most likely way to increase production of NT3 in humans would be through the use of drugs, a number of which researchers have already identified as candidates. From a worker’s compensation perspective, the possibility of reversing hearing loss would represent a substantial development in what has previously been a permanent condition manageable only through the use of hearing aids. However, the use of pharmaceuticals to treat hearing loss would have costs. How substantial those would be is impossible to guess. Regardless, it is worth monitoring the research to see if the same finding can be reproduced in human subjects.
Pain is a difficult and an amorphous concept. The most common understanding of pain is what we feel when our nociceptors are stimulated. A nociceptor is a receptor on a sensory nerve that responds to damaging or potentially damaging stimuli and sends a signal to the brain that is interpreted as pain. When a child falls down and is asked, “does it hurt?” they are referring to nociception. One of the problems we encounter in relation to pain is that not everything that we might classify or categorize as “pain” is wholly or even partially related to nociception. Grief, for example, can be painful but obviously does not implicate nociception, despite the fact that psychic pain can be described in somatic terms or be physically felt or manifested.
The problem with pain is that we have a medical model for addressing concerns related to the body that tends to subsume everything suboptimal as pathological. One of the tenets of the medical model is that a certain level of physical function is optimal and that everything that is not optimal is somehow pathological and amenable to cure. This idea ignores the reality of physical diversity and can turn normal human experience into a medical condition to be treated rather than a normal aspect of life to be lived through or with. The physical changes that occur with aging are a good example of how we medicalize normal human development and attempt to “cure” that which is not pathological. As a culture, we seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking that every medicalized problem has a cure, including the physical changes that occur with age. Hence, we pathologize normal aspects of growing old as “chronic” pain and treat them as if a cure were possible.
Human bodies have tissues that degrade over time; human bodies are also less resilient over time. This is not to say that age-related physical changes do not vary widely in their effects based on individual experience or that lifestyle has no effect on the changes, but rather is an observation that human bodies do not function as well in the 6th decade of life as they do in the 3rd decade of life, all things being equal. In short, we get old.
Getting old is a fact over which we have some influence. We can maintain a healthy weight, eat a diet rich in fiber and fruits and vegetables, maintain an active lifestyle, get adequate sleep, etc. These things will help us to avoid accelerating the aging process within our tissues. In addition, our genetic makeup plays a significant role in how our bodies’ age. Unfortunately, the influence we have does not stop aging or the physical effects of aging. No matter how healthy our weight or our diet or our lifestyle, collagen becomes less elastic, spinal discs desiccate, articular cartilage wears. In the claims world we often feel the effects of medicalizing age because claimants will try to link the normal effects of aging with a worker’s compensation claim or a personal injury claim. Unfortunately, the effects are often exceedingly expensive as such claimants seek seemingly unending treatment to cure the incurable: age. Both claimants and claims administrators would be better served if treating physicians identified age-related degenerative changes and gave patients options to help them cope with the changes better rather than promising panaceas (usually in the form of surgery) that do not help.
Medical News Today reports on a study published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (subscription required) which found that patients whose opioid use was increasing prior to spine surgery had worse outcomes than those whose opioid use was not. As Medical News Today notes, studies have shown that opioid use prior to spine surgery frequently leads to worse outcomes, but "the studies did not account for differences in opioid consumption among patients." In this new study, the authors concluded that, "increased preoperative opioid use was a significant predictor of worse health outcomes at 3 and 12 months following surgical treatment..." While this news is not particularly surprising to those in the medico-legal world, it does offer an opportunity to ask IME physicians a targeted question about the appropriateness of spine surgery in claimants with a demonstrated history of opioid dose escalation which should ensure that the physician's opinion explicitly relies on evidence-based medicine and hence is more credible.
Interesting new research from the University of Manchester finds that current smoking increases risk of hearing loss by 15.1%. Researchers were not sure whether "toxins in tobacco smoke affect hearing directly, or whether smoking-related cardiovascular disease causes microvascular changes that impact on hearing, or both." Regardless, current smokers or those exposed to passive smoking could could provide employers and insurance carriers with a potential new defense in occupational hearing loss cases if the study's results are replicated or otherwise confirmed.
What do we do when we have a conversation? Turns out, we do a lot of anticipating and predicting about what the other person is going to say. This predictive process makes our normal conversations better, or at least more readily intelligible. In an interesting study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, researchers found that “language processing is comprised of an anticipatory stage and a perceptual stage: both speakers and listeners take advantage of predictability by ‘preprocessing’ predictable representations during the anticipatory stage, which subsequently affects how those representations are processed during perception.” This would seem to have implications for the medico-legal world because of the reliance on oral statements, whether recorded or not, formal or informal in claims administration. Specifically, the quality of the answers one gets in a statement can potentially be manipulated when either party understands the predictive process involved in conversation. For example, when speakers introduce unexpected words or phrases, listeners become more prone to error: “When subsequently confronted with unpredicted words, listeners/readers typically show a prediction error response.” A clever interviewer could use this information to keep the interviewee off guard, which may help elicit information the interviewee had been consciously trying not to reveal. Conversely, a clever interviewee will be conscious of her tendency to answer based on both prediction and cognition and will take steps to limit the affect prediction has on her answers.
One simple technique interviewees can use is to (silently) repeat every question that is asked of them back to themselves before answering. This focuses the interviewee on comprehension and cognition rather than prediction, which will help the interviewee limit her response to what was in fact asked and not on what her predictive mind assumed was asked. This also may be effective because the prediction happens so quickly and over such a short period of time. According to the authors of the study, “[A]nticipation may precede perception by as little as 200 milliseconds…” This is an incredibly short time interval and any device that an interviewee can employ to slow cognition down will allow her to limit the tendency to anticipate where the speaker is going with a question and instead to hear the actual question that is asked.
One of the things that our brains do brilliantly well is to construct order of the world around us. This predictive aspect of speech is part of that. We are hard-wired to recognize patterns and make connections; hence, we gravitate to coherent narrative versions of events. It is difficult for our brains to process events without linking them together causally. Our conversations reflect this tendency as well. In fact, when people do not conform to the normal way conversation works in this regard it is noticeable and such speakers often seem odd, idiosyncratic, or eccentric.
The problem with the predictive process of speech and our tendency to turn our conversations into coherent narratives is that it inhibits our ability to ask the right questions and give the best answers. When taking a statement, the interviewer should keep in mind that the process is not a conversation in the ordinary sense of the word. That is why, for example, it is imperative to wait until the interviewee completes her response to each question before moving on to the next one. While normal conversation works better when we allow the predictive aspect of conversation to fulfill its function, in a statement the predictive aspect can lead the interviewer away from valuable areas of inquiry simply by virtue of dovetailing the interviewer’s thoughts about what to ask next with the interviewee’s response. Instead, interviewers should be mindful of the process and ask questions that occasionally interrupt the narrative flow to keep her attention focused on what the interviewee is actually saying. One such strategy could involve interjecting questions about an unrelated topic periodically. For example, during questions about the facts of an accident the interviewer might want to ask a question about current prescriptions that the interviewee takes. The question will feel strange when asked, but it is surprising how quickly this jars the interviewer back to the kind of focused attention that is necessary to obtain an effective statement. And that, after all, is the goal.
Evidence continues to mount that arthroscopy to treat osteoarthritis of the knee is no better than sham surgery or conservative care. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) published a final report (executive summary available here) on May 12, 2014 that consisted of a meta-analysis of various studies comparing arthroscopy to various modalities, including sham surgery and strengthening exercises. The report’s authors concluded that:
While this information is not new, it bolsters the conclusion that arthroscopy to treat osteoarthritis of the knee is no more effective than other modalities, including conservative care and doing nothing. The standard of care does appear to be shifting toward the abandonment of arthroscopy to treat osteoarthritis of the knee; however, the procedure is still performed occasionally. In managing claims, it is important to ensure that approval for any arthroscopic knee procedure be based on evidence-based medicine. Insurance carriers should not be expected to bear the cost of procedures the benefit of which “is not proven.” In addition, injured plaintiffs and employees should not be expected to bear the risks of surgical complications and extended recovery periods for procedures the benefit of which “is not proven.”
Medical News Today reported on a piece in Neurology (subscription required) in which researchers conducted memory studies on retired French workers who had been exposed to solvents during their working years. The specific solvents included benzene, chlorinated solvents, and petroleum solvents. The retirees had been out of work for an average of 10 years and the average age of study participants was 66. The results demonstrated that only 18% of the persons tested had no memory impairment. This statistic is more troubling in context: only 16% of the persons tested had no exposure to solvents. Another troubling aspect of the study is that it found that persons with high but distant solvent exposure (31-50 years prior to testing) still demonstrated measurable cognitive deficits.
While it would be too early to draw definitive conclusions from the report, it seems likely that the findings will prompt further investigation. If subsequent studies confirm the researchers’ conclusions, it certainly could prompt claims by those exposed to the offending solvents through their employment. This is significant because chlorinated solvents and petroleum solvents are found in such common items as cleaners, degreasers, and paint. Exposure to these products is regulated, but if new information becomes available that demonstrates the level of exposure that causes harm is lower than previously thought then employees in such occupations as commercial housekeeping and painting who suffer cognitive decline that would have been attributed to other factors may now connect the cognitive decline to solvent exposure on the job. Obviously the effect on worker’s compensation claims would be significant as would the likely third party claims against the manufacturers of the solvents.
Medical News Today reports on a recent finding from Johns Hopkins that most spine surgeons do not follow recommendations for presurgical screening for depression and anxiety. This is significant because depression and anxiety are known to increase recovery times and reduce the likelihood of a successful outcome. According to one researcher quoted in the Medical News Today article,
Interestingly, the study found that surgeons in private practice and at community hospitals were more likely to provide presurgical screening than were surgeons affiliated with university hospitals. In addition, surgeons with more than 15 years of practice and those performing 200+ spinal surgeries per year were more likely to provide screening.
Considering the enormous expense of spine surgery, it would seem wise for claims handlers to exert whatever influence or control available to ensure that claimants receive proper presurgical psychological screening before undergoing recommended spine surgery. This also seems to be an area in which the insurance industry (including group health carriers) could and should exert its influence to make presurgical psychological screening mandatory in spine surgery cases.
Many of us are in the business, directly or indirectly, of employee health and well-being. From a purely economic standpoint, employee health and well-being is a significant cost driver in any business. In the medico-legal world we are often at the intersection of disease status/health and employment. Historically, businesses have analyzed health and injury claims made to assess employee health, which was then used as a predictor of worker productivity.
Claims made is an easy but de facto method of measuring employee health. In addition, claims made do not capture other stressors that may impact productivity such as financial problems, family strife, etc. Claims made also fail to capture disease status/health that could result in claims made but are, for myriad reasons, not. For example, an employee with a chronic health condition may be on her spouses insurance and hence have claims that would otherwise be made but instead go unreported. Also, an employer with poor or no insurance is likely to have a claims history that does not accurately reflect the health status of its employees and how this impacts productivity.
Recent research suggests that employee well-being is a more accurate and dynamic metric for predicting employee productivity. In a compelling article, “Comparing the Contributions of Well-Being and Disease Status to Employee Productivity,” Gandy et al. found that “physical health is not sufficient to represent the vicissitudes of productivity in the modern workplace, but that the more global measure of individual well-being has a more important role in explaining productivity variance among workers.” The report specifically concluded that individual well-being status was “more predictive [of on-the-job productivity] compared to other factors, including disease status.” The study reported that well-being status was more predictive than disease status even among those with a positive disease status (diabetes, in this case). In other words, a worker with diabetes but with a positive well-being score was likely to be more productive than a healthy worker with a lower well-being score.
Gandy et al.’s findings dovetail with the general attitude shifts that have swept across the business world which has caused businesses to view employees as dynamic parts of and integral to corporate success. As Gandy et al. note, “In the new globally competitive marketplace, human capital has become the competitive advantage that employers can no longer afford to take for granted.” This paradigm shift has been borne out in the marketplace. For example, “A large international survey by the World Economic Forum found that organizations viewed as actively promoting health and well-being were at least 2.5 times more likely to be rated a best performer and to encourage creativity and 4 times less likely to lose talent.” One reason for the survey’s salience is “because well-being is many times a cause of other valued outcomes, such as worker productivity and rewarding relationships.”
This disconnect between health and well-being frequently plagues worker’s compensation claims. Surely we have all been dogged by the employee whose behavior seems considerably more impaired than the objective physical findings suggest. Frequently we look to issues like symptom magnification, malingering, or secondary gain to explain this perplexing behavior. Perhaps, we should instead be asking targeted questions to get at the person’s overall well-being. If the root cause of the disconnect between behavior and objective physical findings can be identified, at a minimum the behavior will be less perplexing and it may offer the opportunity to solve an otherwise vexing claim.
Medical News Today has an article about exciting research from the United Kingdom regarding management of back pain. The article notes that:
To accomplish the targeted care, general practitioners participating in the study gave patients a 9 part questionnaire to evaluate the severity of their back problems. Patients were then placed low risk, medium risk, and high risk categories, with treatment individualized based on the level of risk. Importantly, the low risk patients were not given intensive treatment but were simply reassured about their back pain and given strategies for managing it. Medium and high risk patients received "more intensive treatments led by [physical therapists]."
Prior research found that targeted treatment of back pain was effective, but this is the first evidence that targeted care is effective at the family practice level of care. Medical News Today quotes Professor Alan Silman, medical director of Arthritis Research UK:
Critically, the research found that the targeted approach to back pain does not increase costs. Whether the results can be duplicated remains to be seen, but the study offers a promising method for early, cost-effective intervention in persons suffering from back pain. The fact that the protocol resulted in a 50% reduction in workplace absence is remarkable and reason enough to attempt to replicate the findings so they can be implemented as standard care in general medical practices. Professor Silman put it to Medical News Today best:
An Australian study published in JAMA Psychiatry (subscription required) found that "compensation claimants who have stressful claims recover more slowly than those who have less stressful experiences." This probably comes as no surprise to those involved in worker's compensation and liability claims. Interestingly though, the lead author's take was unexpected. “Reducing the stress claimants experience in claims processes has the potential to help to improve their recovery, and result in better outcomes,” said Dr. Genevieve Grant. The question for those involved in worker's compensation and personal injury claims is how to balance the benefits of streamlining claims (and hence reducing stress and costs) with the obligation to accept only legitimate claims. While there is no easy answer to this problem, the results of the Australian study, if replicated, will at least add objective evidence to the calculation. And objective decision-making is always better than the alternative.
Researchers at the University Of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston, Rice University, and Shriners Hospital for Children-Houston recently published findings in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (subscription required) regarding use of antibiotic-containing microspheres that could lead to their use in joint replacement surgeries. Researchers found that antibiotic-containing microspheres could significantly reduce the rate of infection in joint replacement surgery:
Porous metal implants that were coated with the microspheres prevented infection in 100 percent of the 11 specimens. In the tissue and bone surrounding implants that were not coated with the antibiotic delivery system, infection occurred at a rate of 64 percent. (Emphasis added).
According to a press release announcing the findings, the infection rate in joint replacement surgery is between 1% and 3%. While this is a low figure, one million persons per year undergo hip and knee replacements alone. This means that between 10,000 and 30,000 patients develop an infection after joint replacement surgery. As anyone who has been involved with a claim in which a joint replacement became infected knows, the costs of infection can be staggering. Often the original prosthesis will have to be removed to treat the infection. Sometimes patients end up effectively undergoing three joint replacements because an antibiotic-impregnated temporary prosthesis is used to treat the infection, which will then be taken out when the infection is cleared and replaced with a second permanent prosthesis. The lead researcher, Catherine Ambrose, Ph.D., noted:
[m]ade of biodegradable polymers, the antibiotics are gradually released over a period of weeks and eventually the microspheres dissolve, allowing sufficient time to prevent or treat an infection while reducing the likelihood of additional surgeries.
Better preventing and controlling infections in joint replacement surgeries would greatly decrease both costs and human suffering.The use of microspheres is exciting for reasons other than simply reducing the rate of infection. When persons develop an infection after a joint replacement, they are typically given systemic antibiotics. Microspheres offer a significant advantage when it comes to side effects because they are administered directly at the surgical site. According Ambrose, "[t]he microspheres could be administered directly at the surgical site, eliminating the need for systemic antibiotics that impact the entire body." Systemic antibiotics are hard on the body. They often cause gastrointestinal problems (and in extreme cases can lead to the development of infection with clostridium difficile, or c diff). Systemic antibiotics can also cause fever, rash, and potentially more extreme, though rare, side effects.It will be interesting to follow the use of antibiotic-containing microspheres in joint replacement surgery. If they prove as effective in practice as they have in the preliminary, preclinical trial, they will eliminate much suffering while reducing costs and improving outcomes in joint replacement surgeries.
Although this report has been all over the news for the last few days, it bears repeating. In Finland a group of 146 candidates for partial arthroscopic meniscectomy agreed to participate in a trial in which half would receive a meniscectomy and half would receive sham surgery, in which arthroscopic portals would be incised but no procedure performed. The candidates all had degenerative meniscus tears and no evidence of osteoarthritis. The study, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that,
In this trial involving patients without knee osteoarthritis but with symptoms of a degenerative medial meniscus tear, the outcomes after arthroscopic partial meniscectomy were no better than those after a sham surgical procedure.
Although the study did not determine who might actually benefit from meniscectomy, it "included patients with mechanical symptoms such as catching or locking of the knee," according to a physician that NPR interviewed regarding the results. As The Wall Street Journal noted, the study estimated that the annual cost of arthroscopic meniscectomy in the U.S. is $4 Billion.While the study size is small, "[t]he implications are fairly profound," according to Jeffrey Katz, a professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who wasn't involved in the Finnish study. It will be interesting to see how the study affects worker's compensation claims as work-related knee injuries in which a meniscus tear is alleged are relatively common. One of the authors of the study was not optimistic that it would change clinical practice, noting that a prior study which found physical therapy was as effective as surgery for patients with osteoarthritis and a meniscus tear did not. Regardless, I expect that the best medical experts will raise this issue when addressing the reasonableness of treatment in the context of meniscus tears, which should give additional weight to their opinions.
Christopher Tidball has a quality article on choosing medical bill review vendors at propertycasualty360.com. While not directly related to the IME world, Tidball makes a number of good points. Salient to all aspects of the claims process, he notes that cost should be judged as a net performance metric rather than a simple quote in a bidding process. In his words, "[t]he most important aspect of pricing is not what the vendor is quoting, but what the carrier will actually pay." The discrepancy between these two "prices" can be quite large. In choosing an IME vendor, the same is true. "Price" should be judged by the net cost to the bottom line, including the level of service received, and not just by the upfront quote.
Researchers recently discovered that persons suffering from lumbago (low back pain) alter their movements because they fear possible back pain. Researchers believe that this behavior can contribute to acute low back pain becoming chronic. Essentially, "[t]hey are trapped within a vicious circle: fearing the suffering linked to movement, they lose their mobility, and the pain persists." Most interesting was the fact that patients in the study felt less pain when researchers told them they were going to feel less pain even when the pain stimulus being applied was higher. As the author of the article points out, "it seems that the first pain-reliever to be administered to a patient suffering from acute lumbago should be a generous dose of reassuring words, in order to prevent the illness from becoming chronic."This is potentially an important development for the medico-legal world because the costs of surgical intervention on worker's compensation and personal injury claims are staggering and any method for helping patients manage acute low back pain to prevent it from becoming chronic would represent a huge cost savings.
In a rare development, two researchers from Belgium discovered a new knee ligament called the anterolateral ligament ('ALL'). The researchers began looking into the possibility of an undiscovered anatomical structure in the knee because of unusual symptoms that were reported after successful ACL repairs. Specifically, "some patients with ACL-repaired knees continue to experience so-called 'pivot shift', or episodes where the knee 'gives way' during activity." Oddly enough, a French surgeon had postulated the existence of an as yet undiscovered anterior knee ligament in 1879. Over 130 years later he was proven right. The Belgian researchers published their findings in The Journal of Anatomy.In the claims setting, this discovery may impact future treatment of ACL injuries, though the discovery is so new that the extent of its impact is not known.For more information on Medical Systems go to www.MedicalSystemsUSA.com
