Medical Cost of Workers' Compensation Claims Related to Patient Handling and Mobility Tasks Within Skilled Nursing Facilities, Continuing Care Retirement Communities and Assisted Living Facilities: An Exploratory Analysis.

OBJECTIVE

Evaluate the medical costs related to patient handling & mobility (PH&M) claims.

METHODS

Closed medical only and indemnity workers' compensation claims were utilized for this exploratory study. In addition to the PH&M tasks, the claimants' gender, age, tenure, and the claim lag time were also analyzed.

RESULTS

Generalized linear models indicated that variables related to tasks, claims' number of open days and age of the claimants had meaningful effects on the adjusted medical costs for medical only claims. For indemnity claims, the number of open days of claims, age and tenure had meaningful effects. Gender had meaningful effects only for indemnity claims when classifying the claims by patient handling tasks versus non-patient handling tasks.

CONCLUSIONS

Results showed that factors, other than the type of injury; meaningfully influenced the adjusted medical costs of indemnity claims.