Performing evidence-based work disability prognosis evaluation (WDPE) of clients on sick leave is a difficult task for physicians. The aim was to develop a working method to support physicians in performing evidence-based WDPE and to improve WDPE quality.
Intervention Mapping (IM) supplemented with elements of the Behavior Change Wheel (BCW) guided project planning for developing the working method. This approach allowed combination with other frameworks and, e.g., behavior change theories. WDPE quality challenges were analyzed on various ecological levels, e.g., the individual (i.e., the physician), interpersonal (i.e., the client) and organizational level, culminating into a multilevel logic model of the problem. Determinants that contributed to this problem, e.g., lack of physicians\' knowledge on performing evidence-based WDPE, were identified. Performance objectives were formulated that could contribute to a desired change in WDPE quality. From the performance objectives and determinants (e.g., knowledge), change objectives were derived. In order to achieve these change objectives, suitable intervention functions (e.g., education) and policy categories (e.g., service provision) were identified, allowing the formulation of intervention components. Behavior change techniques (e.g., feedback on outcomes of a behavior) were selected to serve the intervention functions to deliver the desired change. This led to the conceptualization of an intervention plan.
The intervention \"Prognosable\" is presented. It consists of a stepwise working method (SWM) for evidence-based WDPE. The SWM offers an overview of important aspects (e.g., medical condition, clients\' confidence in return-to-work) to consider in individual clients\' WDPE. The SWM helps physicians to identify crucial functional limitations, find and appraise evidence-based information, weigh all relevant prognostic aspects and it supports physicians to conclude with an evidence-based WDPE, tailored to the individual client. The intervention \"Prognosable\" was designed, which also includes an educational program and a supportive software tool to enable implementation of the SWM.
IM combined with BCW elements guided the development of a SWM for evidence-based WDPE. The SWM will be delivered through an educational program for physicians supported by a digital tool. The SWM, educational program and digital tool are ready to be implemented and evaluated in practice as the intervention \"Prognosable.\"

This study explores pedestrian fall accidents and collisions with other road users in the Swedish road transport system, and sickness absence (SA) in relation to accident type, injury, and occupation. Further, it studies the associations between accident type, occupation, and duration of SA.
Data from several national registers were used that included 15,359 working age pedestrians (20-64 years) receiving healthcare after a fall or collision throughout 2014-2016. Individual characteristics, accident type, injury, and occupation were presented and related to SA. Logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (OR), with 95% confidence intervals, for associations between accident type, occupation, and SA duration.
About 11,000 pedestrians (72%) were involved in fall accidents in the road traffic environment and well over 4,000 in collisions with another road user; 22% of all injured pedestrians had a new SA. The population had a higher proportion of women and individuals in older age groups (≥45). Of the falls, 31% were due to snow or ice, and these were associated with a higher OR for both short SA (<90 days) 1.76 (95% CI 1.56-1.98) and long SA (≥90 days) 1.81 (95% CI 1.51-2.18), compared to the group slipping, tripping, and stumbling. The working sectors health & social care, and construction had the highest ORs for SA. A higher OR was found for health & social care, short SA 1.58 (95% CI 1.38-1.81), long SA 1.79 (95% CI 1.45-2.20) and for construction, short SA 1.56 (95% CI 1.24-1.96), long SA 1.75 (95% CI 1.26-2.44), compared to the sector finance, communication, & cultural service.
The OR for having short and long SA was higher in falls due to snow or ice and differed between occupational sectors.
This information contributes to the knowledge base for planning a safe road transport system for pedestrians.

UNASSIGNED: To determine needs, expectations, facilitators, and barriers of insurance physicians (IPs) for using eHealth in their work. Also, we investigated differences between age groups.
UNASSIGNED: All insurance physicians employed at the Dutch Social Security Institute (SSI) received an online anonymous survey in July 2020.
UNASSIGNED: Three hundred and fifteen IPs (31%) responded. According to these IPs, the most important need for using eHealth was to collect medical information more effectively and efficiently (71%).Main facilitators were that eHealth could make IPs\' work more effectively and efficiently (61%) and more future-proof (60%). Main barriers were losing human interaction (54%) and security issues (51%). Younger IPs saw more options for using eHealth, compared to older IPs.
UNASSIGNED: The majority of IPs (in particular younger IPs) had a positive view towards using eHealth in their daily work. Nevertheless, differences in needs, expectations, facilitators and barriers between the age groups should be taken into account for the successful development and implementation of interventions using eHealth in insurance medicine.
For the successful development and implementation of eHealth interventions in insurance medicine and rehabilitation, the needs, expectations, facilitators, and barriers that physicians indicate should be taken into account.Insurance physicians support the use of eHealth interventions to collect medical information more effectively and efficiently, to contribute to and maintain the quality of care, in the perspective of managing expected shortages in insurance physicians.When concretizing eHealth interventions for rehabilitation professionals, one should take the importance of face to face interaction with patients into account.Extra education and training for older insurance physicians may improve the implementation of eHealth interventions, because they are less inclined to see its value and feel less competent to use it.

UNASSIGNED: Insurers often commission psychiatric experts to evaluate the eligibility of workers with mental disorders for disability benefits, by estimating their residual work capacity (RWC). We investigated the validity of a standardized, computer-based battery of established diagnostic instruments, for evaluating the personality, cognition, performance, symptom burden, and symptom validity of claimants.
UNASSIGNED: One hundred and fifty-three claimants for benefits were assessed by the assembled test battery, which was applied in addition to a conventional clinical work disability evaluation.
UNASSIGNED: A principal component analysis of the test and questionnaire battery data revealed six factors (Negative Affectivity, Self-Perceived Work Ability, Behavioral Dysfunction, Working Memory, Cognitive Processing Speed, and Excessive Work Commitment). Claimants with low, medium, and high RWC exclusively varied in the factor Negative Affectivity. Importantly, this factor also showed a strong association to psychiatric ratings of capacity limitations in psychosocial functioning.
UNASSIGNED: The findings demonstrate that the used test battery allows a substantiation of RWC estimates and of psychiatric ratings by objective and standardized data. If routinely incorporated in work disability evaluations, the test battery could increase their transparency for all stakeholders (insurers, claimants, medical experts, expert case-coordinators, and legal practitioners) and would open new avenues for research in the field of insurance medicine.Implications for rehabilitationThe residual work capacity (RWC) estimation by medical experts is internationally good practice, but plagued by a relatively low interrater agreement.The current study shows that psychiatric RWC estimates and capacity limitation ratings can be substantiated by data from objective, standardized psychometric instruments.Systematically using such instruments might help to improve the poor interrater agreement for RWC estimates in work disability evaluations.Such data could also be used for adopting vocational trainings and return-to-work programs to the individual needs of workers with mental health problems.

UNASSIGNED: This study aimed to investigate occupational health (OH) primary-care patients\' use of other health-care services and whether parallel use affects their likelihood to have sickness absences (SA) or disability pensions (DP).
UNASSIGNED: Primary-care services in Finland are provided through three parallel health-care sectors, all available to the working population: public, private and OH sectors. Patients may also be referred to secondary care. This follow-up study combines real-world medical record data containing SA data from a nationwide OH provider with health-care attendance data from public and private primary-care sectors and public secondary care, sociodemographic data and DP decisions. Patients between 18 and 68 years of age who used OH primary care at least once during the study years 2014-2016 were included. The total study population comprised 59,650 patients. Odds ratios were used to analyse association between parallel service use and SA or DP.
UNASSIGNED: Females and patients with a lower educational level were more likely to use services in other health-care sectors in addition to OH than others. Those patients who used any other health-care sector in addition to OH primary care had an increased likelihood of having long SA or receiving DP.
UNASSIGNED: OH primary-care patients using the services of several health-care sectors in parallel have an increased likelihood of receiving disability benefits - either SA or DP. There is need for care coordination to ensure adequate measures for work-ability support.

UNASSIGNED: The National Insurance Act administrates an important part of the welfare system in Norway by entitlements to benefits. Disease is an absolute requirement for many benefits, but the Act does not provide any definition of disease. The National Insurance Court is the normative body in management of the Act. In 1994, a consensus report was written on the concept of disease on behalf of the National Insurance Court, which subsequently became a guideline in the management of decisions. This study examined how the concept of disease has been interpretated in recent decisions in the National Insurance Court compared to the interpretation in the consensus report.
UNASSIGNED: The material consisted of anonymous decisions from the National Insurance Court in the period from September 2018 to August 2019. It was analysed by systematic text condensation and compared to the consensus report by a theory-driven content analysis.
UNASSIGNED: The consensus report described disease as a value-laden condition with personal resources and external environment as decisive context, while the decisions express disease as a process with causal relationship to personal resources and external environment.
UNASSIGNED: The analysis of recent decisions showed that the interpretation of the concept of disease has moved in a value-neutral direction compared to the consensus report.

UNASSIGNED: A variety of interventions aiming to influence physicians\' sickness certification practice have been conducted, most are, however, not evaluated scientifically. The aim of this systematic literature review was to obtain updated knowledge about interventions regarding physicians\' sickness certification practice and to summarize their possible effects, in terms of sickness absence (SA) or return to work (RTW) among patients.
UNASSIGNED: We searched PubMed and Web of Science up through 15 June 2020 and selected peer-reviewed studies that reported effects of controlled interventions that aimed to improve physicians\' sickness certification practice and used SA or RTW among patients as outcome measures. Meta-analyses were conducted using random-effect models.
UNASSIGNED: Of the 1399 identified publications, 12 studies covering 9 interventions were assessed as relevant and included in the review. Most (70%) were from the Netherlands, two had a controlled, and seven a randomized controlled study design. All interventions included some type of training of physicians, and two interventions also included IT-support. Regarding the outcomes of SA/RTW, 30 different effect measures were used. In the meta-analyses, no statistically significant effect in favor of the interventions was observed for having any RTW (i.e. first, partial, or full) nor full RTW.
UNASSIGNED: The individual studies showed that physicians\' sickness certification practice might be influenced by interventions in both the intended and non-intended direction, however, no statistically significant effect was indicated by the meta-analysis. The included studies varied considerably concerning intervention content and effect measures.KEY POINTSThe knowledge is very limited regarding the content of interventions directed to physician\'s sickness certification practiceThe identified interventions included some type of training of physicians, and some of them also included IT-support for physiciansThere was a great heterogeneity among the interventions concerning effect measures used regarding return to work among patientsThe individual studies showed that physicians\' sickness certification practice might be influenced by interventions in both intended and non-intended directions, however, the overall meta-analysis did not indicate an effect.

Independent medical evaluations are used to evaluate degree and reason for work disability, uncertainty around the functional status, and/or the employee\'s rehabilitation potential in several jurisdictions, but not in Norway. The main aim of this trial was to test the return to work effect of independent medical evaluation (IME) (summoning and consultation) compared to treatment as usual (TAU) in Norway, for workers who have been on continuous sick leave for 6 months.
This was a pragmatic randomised controlled trial including all employees aged 18-65 years, sick-listed by their general practitioner and on full or partial sick leave for the past 26 weeks in Hordaland County, Norway in 2015/16. Trial candidates were drawn from a central register at the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration at 22 weeks of sick leave. Pregnant women, individuals with cancer or dementia diagnoses, those with secret address, employed by NAV or sick listed by the specialist health services were excluded. Separate regression analyses were conducted to investigate the \"intention-to-treat\" and \"treatment on the treated\" effects, using the ordinary least squares and instrumental variable methods, respectively.
After exemption based on predefined exclusion criteria, 5888 individuals were randomised to either IME (n = 2616) or TAU (n = 2599). The final intervention group constitutes 1698 individuals, of which 937 attended the IME consultation. No baseline differences were found between the IME and TAU group regarding gender, age, and previous sick leave. Individuals attending the IME were older than those who cancelled the appointment ((47/45), p = 0.006) and those who did not show up without cancelling ((47/42), p < 0.001). Mainly the IME physician agreed with the regular GP upon level of sick leave. In cases with different assessments, the difference tended to be towards a lower sick leave level. There were no intention to treat or treatment on the treated effect on days of sick leave after randomisation during follow up.
Overall, the analyses showed no effect of IME on changes in sick leave for sick listed employees. This result was consistent for those who were offered an IME consultation (intention to treat) and those who undertook an IME consultation (treatment on the treated).
ClinicalTirals.gov trial number NCT02524392 first registration 14.08.2015.

For the last few decades, medical guidelines have recommended treating patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) with graded exercise therapy (GET) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Moreover, doctors have questioned the recovery behaviour of these patients and stimulated them to follow these treatments so that they would be able to go back to work. In this article, we reviewed trials of GET and CBT for ME/CFS that reported on work status before and after treatment to answer the question of whether doctors should continue to question the recovery behaviour of patients with ME/CFS. Our review shows that more patients are unable to work after treatment than before treatment with CBT and GET. It also highlights the fact that both treatments are unsafe for patients with ME/CFS. Therefore, questioning the recovery behaviour of patients with ME/CFS is pointless. This confirms the conclusion from the British National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which has recently published its updated ME/CFS guideline and concluded that CBT and GET are not effective and do not lead to recovery. Studies on CBT and GET for long COVID have not yet been published. However, this review offers no support for their use in improving the recovery of patients with an ME/CFS-like illness after infection with COVID-19, nor does it lend any support to the practice of questioning the recovery behaviour of these patients.

The knowledge is scarce about sickness absence (SA) and disability pension (DP) among pedestrians injured in a traffic-related accident, including falls. Thus, the aim was to explore the frequencies of types of accidents and injuries and their association with SA and DP among working-aged individuals.
A nationwide register-based study, including all individuals aged 16-64 and living in Sweden, who in 2010 had in- or specialized outpatient healthcare after a new traffic-related accident as a pedestrian. Information on age, sex, sociodemographics, SA, DP, type of accident, injury type, and injured body region was used. Frequencies of pedestrians with no SA or DP, with ongoing SA or full-time DP already at the time of the accident, and with a new SA spell >14 days in connection to the accident were analyzed. Crude and adjusted odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for new SA were estimated by logistic regression.
In total, 5576 pedestrians received healthcare due to a traffic-related accident (of which 75% were falls, with half of the falls related to snow and ice). At the time of the accident, 7.5% were already on SA and 10.8% on full-time DP, while 20% started a new SA spell. The most common types of injuries were fractures (45%) and external injuries (30%). The body region most frequently injured was the lower leg, ankle, foot, and other (in total 26%). Older individuals had a higher OR for new SA compared with younger (OR 1.91; 95% CI 1.44-2.53, for ages: 45-54 vs. 25-34). The injury type with the highest OR for new SA, compared with the reference group external injuries, was fractures (9.58; 7.39-12.43). The injured body region with the highest OR for new SA, compared with the reference group head, face, and neck, was lower leg, ankle, foot, and other (4.52; 2.78-7.36).
In this explorative nationwide study of the working-aged pedestrians injured in traffic-related accidents including falls, one fifth started a new SA spell >14 days. Fractures, internal injuries, collisions with motor vehicle, and falls related to snow and ice had the strongest associations with new SA.