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Improved recording of work relatedness during patient consultations in occupational primary health care: a cluster randomized controlled trial using routine data

BACKGROUND: Prolonging working careers is a key policy goal in ageing populations in Europe, but reaching this goal is complex. Occupational health services are in the best position to contribute towards prolonging working careers through preventing illnesses that cause work disability and early ret...

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Autores principales: Atkins, Salla, Reho, Tiia, Talola, Nina, Sumanen, Markku, Viljamaa, Mervi, Uitti, Jukka
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7068938/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32164777
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13063-020-4168-8
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author Atkins, Salla
Reho, Tiia
Talola, Nina
Sumanen, Markku
Viljamaa, Mervi
Uitti, Jukka
author_facet Atkins, Salla
Reho, Tiia
Talola, Nina
Sumanen, Markku
Viljamaa, Mervi
Uitti, Jukka
author_sort Atkins, Salla
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Prolonging working careers is a key policy goal in ageing populations in Europe, but reaching this goal is complex. Occupational health services are in the best position to contribute towards prolonging working careers through preventing illnesses that cause work disability and early retirement. However, impacting on the trajectory between illness and work disability requires continuity of care and follow up, enabled through identifying patients at risk. We aimed to determine whether a combined educational and electronic reminder system in occupational health care could improve the recording and follow up of primary care visits made by patients at risk of work disability, and whether the system could impact on sickness absence rates. METHODS: This study is a pragmatic, cluster-randomized controlled trial using medical record data. Twenty-two Pihlajalinna Työterveys units were randomized into an intervention group receiving education and electronic reminders or a group receiving usual care through minimization methods. Patient consultation data were extracted from routine Pihlajalinna Työterveys patient registers from 2015 to 2017. In addition, process indicators were collected from the electronic system. Data were cleaned and analysed on an intention-to-treat basis using analysis of covariance. RESULTS: There was no significant difference between intervention and control units in terms of sickness absences of different duration. Process indicators suggested that there was a change in physicians’ practice of recording patients’ risk of work disability and work-relatedness of visits following the educational intervention. CONCLUSION: Education with an electronic reminder can change physicians’ practice, but long-term follow up is needed to determine whether this impacts on patients’ sickness absences. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN Registry: ISRCTN45728263. Registered on 12 April 2016.
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spelling pubmed-70689382020-03-18 Improved recording of work relatedness during patient consultations in occupational primary health care: a cluster randomized controlled trial using routine data Atkins, Salla Reho, Tiia Talola, Nina Sumanen, Markku Viljamaa, Mervi Uitti, Jukka Trials Research BACKGROUND: Prolonging working careers is a key policy goal in ageing populations in Europe, but reaching this goal is complex. Occupational health services are in the best position to contribute towards prolonging working careers through preventing illnesses that cause work disability and early retirement. However, impacting on the trajectory between illness and work disability requires continuity of care and follow up, enabled through identifying patients at risk. We aimed to determine whether a combined educational and electronic reminder system in occupational health care could improve the recording and follow up of primary care visits made by patients at risk of work disability, and whether the system could impact on sickness absence rates. METHODS: This study is a pragmatic, cluster-randomized controlled trial using medical record data. Twenty-two Pihlajalinna Työterveys units were randomized into an intervention group receiving education and electronic reminders or a group receiving usual care through minimization methods. Patient consultation data were extracted from routine Pihlajalinna Työterveys patient registers from 2015 to 2017. In addition, process indicators were collected from the electronic system. Data were cleaned and analysed on an intention-to-treat basis using analysis of covariance. RESULTS: There was no significant difference between intervention and control units in terms of sickness absences of different duration. Process indicators suggested that there was a change in physicians’ practice of recording patients’ risk of work disability and work-relatedness of visits following the educational intervention. CONCLUSION: Education with an electronic reminder can change physicians’ practice, but long-term follow up is needed to determine whether this impacts on patients’ sickness absences. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN Registry: ISRCTN45728263. Registered on 12 April 2016. BioMed Central 2020-03-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7068938/ /pubmed/32164777 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13063-020-4168-8 Text en © The Author(s). 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Atkins, Salla
Reho, Tiia
Talola, Nina
Sumanen, Markku
Viljamaa, Mervi
Uitti, Jukka
Improved recording of work relatedness during patient consultations in occupational primary health care: a cluster randomized controlled trial using routine data
title Improved recording of work relatedness during patient consultations in occupational primary health care: a cluster randomized controlled trial using routine data
title_full Improved recording of work relatedness during patient consultations in occupational primary health care: a cluster randomized controlled trial using routine data
title_fullStr Improved recording of work relatedness during patient consultations in occupational primary health care: a cluster randomized controlled trial using routine data
title_full_unstemmed Improved recording of work relatedness during patient consultations in occupational primary health care: a cluster randomized controlled trial using routine data
title_short Improved recording of work relatedness during patient consultations in occupational primary health care: a cluster randomized controlled trial using routine data
title_sort improved recording of work relatedness during patient consultations in occupational primary health care: a cluster randomized controlled trial using routine data
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7068938/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32164777
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13063-020-4168-8
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