Both medical practitioners and injured workers find the current approach to health care within workers’ compensation problematic. There is clear evidence for the need to address biopsychosocial care in workers’ compensation systems.
Key elements include:
- Recognition of the importance of treating the whole person, using a biopsychosocial model that addresses the person’s medical condition and associated modifiable influences.
- Evidence-informed medical care (high value health care) that empowers the person with the health condition.
- Incentives for high value care. Better training for health professionals.
- Treatment for work injury that is collaborative. Time lost from work is significantly reduced by interventions that involve integration between two of the three domains of healthcare, workplace accommodation and case management but not by healthcare interventions in isolation.