Hammett, M., Jankosky, C., Muller,

¶ … Hammett, M., Jankosky, C., Muller, J., Hughes, E., & Litow, F. (2012). Physician Review of Workers' Compensation Case Files: Can it Affect Decision Outcomes Military Medicine, 177(1), 17-22. Retrieved September 1, 2012 from ProQuest.

This article deals with finding a relationship between lowering federal workers compensation benefits and physician involvement within the case file.

Using a physician's opinion before administering workers compensation might be able to lower the claim rate by workers.

The dependent variable used for this study was the agreement rate between a doctor's opinion and the approval rate of the claim. The independent variable was the number of claims filed.

Methods

This article used a retrospective case study where the data used from that study was descriptively analyzed with statistical review. The data was gathered by analyzing 258 opinion letters written by physicians on referred cases from 2006-2010. As a result, the article claimed that "when physician's opinions were considered in the outcome of some of those cases, there was a significant difference between the claim acceptance rate in the study population and the total population.

Bias

The authors of this article are honest about the bias in this article. The summed up their subjective nature as they stated "We recognize the selection bias inherent in our study. The Navy ICPA's referred cases in which they noticed something unusual, or which required further clarification from a physician to help support or contest the claim. Given that bias, one might expect that the overwhelming majority of cases would have the Navy Physician opposing the claim. This was not the case." (p.19).

Statistical Procedures

Using the k statistic, the authors assessed the level of agreement between the physicians opinions and the final claim decision of the governing body issuing the claim benefits. A two sided z test was also used to compare the proportion of males in the study population to the proportion of male employees in a comparison population.

Ethical Concerns