Akbarzadeh Khorshidi Hadi, Aickelin Uwe, de Silva Andrea
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3052, Australia.
School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3052, Australia.
Healthcare (Basel). 2023 Aug 4;11(15):2205. doi: 10.3390/healthcare11152205.
This study evaluates the performance of the Early Intervention Physiotherapist Framework (EIPF) for injured workers. This study provides a proper follow-up period (3 years) to examine the impacts of the EIPF program on injury outcomes such as return to work (RTW) and time to RTW. This study also identifies the factors influencing the outcomes.
The study was conducted on data collected from compensation claims of people who were injured at work in Victoria, Australia. Injured workers who commenced their compensation claims after the first of January 2010 and had their initial physiotherapy consultation after the first of August 2014 are included. To conduct the comparison, we divided the injured workers into two groups: physiotherapy services provided by EIPF-trained physiotherapists (EP) and regular physiotherapists (RP) over the three-year intervention period. We used three different statistical analysis methods to evaluate the performance of the EIPF program. We used descriptive statistics to compare two groups based on physiotherapy services and injury outcomes. We also completed survival analysis using Kaplan-Meier curves in terms of time to RTW. We developed univariate and multivariate regression models to investigate whether the difference in outcomes was achieved after adjusting for significantly associated variables.
The results showed that physiotherapists in the EP group, on average, dealt with more claims (over twice as many) than those in the RP group. Time to RTW for the injured workers treated by the EP group was significantly lower than for those who were treated by the RP group, indicated by descriptive, survival, and regression analyses. Earlier intervention by physiotherapists led to earlier RTW.
This evaluation showed that the EIPF program achieved successful injury outcomes three years after implementation. Motivating physiotherapists to intervene earlier in the recovery process of injured workers through initial consultation helps to improve injury outcomes.
本研究评估早期干预物理治疗师框架（EIPF）对受伤工人的效果。本研究提供了适当的随访期（3年），以检验EIPF计划对诸如重返工作岗位（RTW）和RTW时间等损伤结果的影响。本研究还确定了影响这些结果的因素。
该研究基于从澳大利亚维多利亚州工伤赔偿申请中收集的数据进行。纳入了2010年1月1日之后开始提出赔偿申请且在2014年8月1日之后首次接受物理治疗咨询的受伤工人。为了进行比较，我们将受伤工人分为两组：在三年干预期内由接受EIPF培训的物理治疗师（EP）提供的物理治疗服务组和普通物理治疗师（RP）提供的物理治疗服务组。我们使用三种不同的统计分析方法来评估EIPF计划的效果。我们使用描述性统计来比较基于物理治疗服务和损伤结果的两组情况。我们还使用Kaplan-Meier曲线就RTW时间完成了生存分析。我们建立了单变量和多变量回归模型，以研究在对显著相关变量进行调整后是否实现了结果差异。
结果显示，EP组的物理治疗师平均处理的索赔比RP组的物理治疗师多（超过两倍）。描述性、生存性和回归分析表明，EP组治疗的受伤工人的RTW时间明显低于RP组治疗的受伤工人。物理治疗师的早期干预导致了更早的RTW。
该评估表明，EIPF计划在实施三年后取得了成功的损伤治疗效果。激励物理治疗师通过初始咨询在受伤工人的康复过程中更早地进行干预有助于改善损伤治疗效果。
