The EASY (Early Access to Support for You) sickness absence service: a four-year evaluation of the impact on absenteeism

Brown, Judith; Mackay, Daniel; Demou, Evangelia; Craig, Joyce; Frank, John; Macdonald, Ewan

doi:10.5271/sjweh.3480

Cited by 18 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 34 publications

(42 reference statements)

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The latter was also the only study to include the training costs of replacement workers. Employee turnover rates were included in 6 analyses (44, 59,67,76,82,88) with the view that improving the working environment or avoiding injuries, disabilities and diseases causes less employees to leave the firm (26). For instance, Barbosa et al (44) approximated "voluntary termination costs" through workers' compensation and Lahiri and colleagues (76) included the cost of employee turnover rates by multiplying the change in personnel (by a headcount) by estimated costs of turnover by the company (expressed as a percentage of the job-category wage).…”

Section: Additional Costs and Adjustmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They can be included directly in the analysis (eg, by using the total sum of compensation expenses) or can be calculated per employee and used as the price weight for valuing losttime (ie, a variant on the HCA). While compensation data can be easy to collect, the size of these payments is not necessarily related to the loss of productivity capacity (20,26) and can give rise to contaminated absence data, since some datasets will only contain "compensated days" instead of all sick leave.While all approaches estimate the marginal effect of the intervention upon productivity, they can also be seen as fulfilling distinct purposes, and the appropriate method may depend on the intervention, outcomes, perspective, time horizon, study design, etc (14). It might even be interesting to use several methods (eg, the HCA and FCA) (3, 5) or to combine them.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The regulations for workers' compensation differ strongly region by region (25,26) and the expenses are often a mix of replacement wages, disability benefits, insurance expenses and healthcare costs. They can be included directly in the analysis (eg, by using the total sum of compensation expenses) or can be calculated per employee and used as the price weight for valuing losttime (ie, a variant on the HCA).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Productivity estimation in economic evaluations of occupational health and safety interventions: a systematic review

Steel¹,

Godderis²,

Luyten³

2018

Scand J Work Environ Health

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Productivity estimation is a key factor in demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of occupational health and safety (OHS). However, the studies analysed in this systematic review lack standardization, exclude important factors, and the precision, validity and reliability of estimates widely differs. Researchers should be aware of how the method and precision of estimating productivity affects results, and, ultimately, the economic attractiveness of OHS. Key terms: absenteeism; cost-effectiveness; economic evaluation; friction cost; human capital; indirect cost; measurement; methodology; occupational health; occupational health and safety; presenteeism; productivity estimation; review; systematic review; valuation; work This article in PubMed: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29405241 Additional materialPlease note that there is additional material available belonging to this article on the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health -website. Scand J Work Environ Health -online first 1Review Productivity estimation in economic evaluations of occupational health and safety interventions: a systematic review by Jonas Steel, MSc, 1 Lode Godderis, MD,2,3 Jeroen Luyten, PhD 1,4 Steel J, Godderis L, Luyten J. Productivity estimation in economic evaluations of occupational health and safety interventions: a systematic review. Scand J Work Environ Health -online first. doi:10.5271/sjweh.3715Objectives Occupational health and safety (OHS) interventions' effect on worker productivity is an essential, but complex element of the value of these programs. The trustworthiness of economic evaluation studies, aiming to provide guidance to decision-makers in the field of OHS, depends at least partly on how accurately productivity changes are measured. We aim to review the methods used to estimate productivity changes in recently published economic evaluations of OHS interventions. MethodsWe performed systematic searches of economic evaluations of OHS programs published between 2007 and 2017 and reviewed these studies' methods to quantify the programs' impact on worker productivity ResultsOf the 90 identified studies, 44 used a human capital approach, 17 a friction cost approach, 13 stated productivity in natural units (eg, a cost-per-absence-day-avoided), 7 made use of compensation expenses, 4 used output-based methods, 4 an "ad hoc" approach, and 1 study did not state its method. Different approaches were combined in 19 studies. Within these methods, we observed a wide diversity in their precise implementation, especially regarding the measurement and valuation of absenteeism and presenteeism.Conclusions Productivity is a key element of the economic attractiveness of investing in OHS. Economic evaluation studies of OHS would benefit from more methodological standardization in their approach to quantifying productivity change. Future research should better account for the methodological uncertainty that occurs in estimating it in order to demonstrate the impact that particular choices and approaches to productivity estimation ca...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Additional Costs and Adjustmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Productivity estimation in economic evaluations of occupational health and safety interventions: a systematic review

Steel¹,

Godderis²,

Luyten³

2018

Scand J Work Environ Health

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“…Physical and psychosocial work factors have dominated previous research on sickness absence, but the number of studies is more limited on the relationship between these work environment factors and sickness absence among healthcare staff. However, a couple of recent studies have shown that sickness absence management service reduced the excess sickness absence duration among healthcare workers 9 10…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working conditions and compensated sickness absence among nurses and care assistants in Sweden during two decades: a cross-sectional biennial survey study

et al. 2019

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ObjectivesThe aims of the study were to trace the patterns of work environment factors and compensated sickness absence (SA) among nurses and care assistants compared with other occupations and to compare SA among exposed and non-exposed nurses and care assistants.DesignA cross-sectional survey on work environment factors based on the biennial Swedish Work Environment Surveys 1991–2013, linked to longitudinal register data on SA 1993–2014.ParticipantsThe study included 98 249 individuals, stratified into nurses and care assistants (n=16 179) and a reference population including all other occupations (n=82 070).Outcome measureAnnual days of compensated SA (>14 days) 3 years after exposure years.ResultsNurses and care assistants had higher SA in 1993–2014 compared with all other occupations, and differences in background factors only partly explained this relationship. For both groups, exposure to physical work factors remained steady, but the number of exposed were 10%–30% higher among nurses and care assistants. Those exposed to heavy physical work and strenuous working postures had in most years significantly higher SA when compared with non-exposed (rate ratio range: 1.4–1.9). Exposure to high job demands increased 10%–25% in 1991–1999 among nurses and care assistants but became more stable in 2001–2013 and high proportions of high job demands coincided with the increase in SA in 1995–1999. Nurses and care assistants exposed to high job demands had for most years significantly higher SA than non-exposed (rate ratio range: 1.5–2.1). Low job control and low support from supervisors elevated SA significantly only for a few years.ConclusionsExposure to negative work factors among nurses and care assistants was weakly associated with variations in SA, but may be related to their higher level of SA when compared with other occupations. Improved physical and psychosocial working conditions may reduce the elevated SA level in these occupations.

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Interventions to reduce corruption in the health sector

Gaitonde

Oxman

Okebukola

et al. 2016

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

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Background Corruption is the abuse or complicity in abuse, of public or private position, power or authority to benefit oneself, a group, an organisation or others close to oneself; where the benefits may be financial, material or non-material. It is wide-spread in the health sector and represents a major problem. Objectives Our primary objective was to systematically summarise empirical evidence of the effects of strategies to reduce corruption in the health sector. Our secondary objective was to describe the range of strategies that have been tried and to guide future evaluations of promising strategies for which there is insufficient evidence. Search methods We searched 14 electronic databases up to January 2014, including: CENTRAL; MEDLINE; EMBASE; sociological, economic, political and other health databases; Human Resources Abstracts up to November 2010; Euroethics up to August 2015; and PubMed alerts from January 2014 to June 2016. We searched another 23 websites and online databases for grey literature up to August 2015, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Transparency International, healthcare anti-fraud association websites and trial registries. We conducted citation searches in Science Citation Index and Google Scholar, and searched PubMed for related articles up to August 2015. We contacted corruption researchers in December 2015, and screened reference lists of articles up to May 2016. Selection criteria For the primary analysis, we included randomised trials, non-randomised trials, interrupted time series studies and controlled before-after studies that evaluated the effects of an intervention to reduce corruption in the health sector. For the secondary analysis, we included case studies that clearly described an intervention to reduce corruption in the health sector, addressed either our primary or secondary objective, and stated the methods that the study authors used to collect and analyse data. Data collection and analysis One review author extracted data from the included studies and a second review author checked the extracted data against the reports of the included studies. We undertook a structured synthesis of the findings. We constructed a results table and 'Summaries of findings' tables. We used the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach to assess the certainty of the evidence. Main results No studies met the inclusion criteria of the primary analysis. We included nine studies that met the inclusion criteria for the secondary analysis. One study found that a package of interventions coordinated by the US Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Justice recovered a large amount of money and resulted in hundreds of new cases and convictions each year (high certainty of the evidence). Another study ...

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The EASY (Early Access to Support for You) sickness absence service: a four-year evaluation of the impact on absenteeism

Cited by 18 publications

References 34 publications

Productivity estimation in economic evaluations of occupational health and safety interventions: a systematic review

Productivity estimation in economic evaluations of occupational health and safety interventions: a systematic review

Working conditions and compensated sickness absence among nurses and care assistants in Sweden during two decades: a cross-sectional biennial survey study

Interventions to reduce corruption in the health sector

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