Patient-Reported Functional Outcomes after Low Back Pain—A Comparison of Workers’ Compensation and Other Payors

By Sebastian Negrusa, Vennela Thumula, Te-Chun Liu, Randall Lea, M.D.

February 14, 2023 Related Topics: Physical Medicine, Worker Outcomes

Patient-reported outcomes have assumed a place of high importance among governmental and non-workers’ compensation payment systems. They are a new way to provide insights into workers’ recoveries and how health care providers or systems deliver patient-centered care.  

This new study examined the difference in the functional recoveries reported by workers’ compensation patients with low back pain, compared with non-workers’ compensation patients. The study was based on a patient-reported outcome measure that assesses the patient’s functional status during the episode of physical therapy.

The data used in this study were collected at first and last visit from a large sample of low back pain patients who received physical therapy in the United States from 2017 to 2021

Patient-Reported Functional Outcomes after Low Back Pain—A Comparison of Workers’ Compensation and Other Payors. Sebastian Negrusa, Vennela Thumula, Randall D. Lea, and Te-Chun Liu. February 2023. WC-23-17.

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Research Questions:

  • What is the functional status score and why was it used in the study?
  • How different was the change in functional status score after treatment for workers’ compensation low back patients compared with non-workers’ compensation patients?
  • What factors explain the difference in the functional recoveries between workers’ compensation and non-workers’ compensation patients? 

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