Managed Care

Return to Work Toolkit

Ella Baker
Return to Work
Reading time 4 Mins
Published on Sep 26
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Set your employees and your business up for success by crafting a well-developed return to work toolkit. Studies show that the longer an injured employee is off work, the less likely it is for them to return to full-time employment with your company. Your toolkit can help your injured employees return to work faster, allowing you to retain valued employees while maintaining productivity. These factors, combined with the impact lost days have on your business’s premiums and production, make a return to work toolkit a must for your company.

Communication

As in most business matters, communicating with all of the constituents involved in a workplace injury is key. Communicate immediately and often with your Managed Care Organization (MCO) and other appropriate parties. Frequent communication allows your MCO to better manage the injury from the start and immediately begin planning to minimize lost days.

Get creative with assignments

It may be easier for your company if your injured employee could resume their old role immediately upon return, but in many cases, this isn’t feasible or safe. By working with your MCO and the treating physician, you can develop a modified duty position for your employee.

Modified duty positions allow employees to return to productive work while taking on tasks that are therapeutic in nature and don’t put them at risk for additional injury or aggravation of an existing injury. Detailed job descriptions easily allow your MCO to help you develop hybrid approaches to return to work, incorporating some of their pre-injury duties while making other arrangements for those duties that the injured employee cannot currently perform.

Available programs

In Ohio, there are many programs available to employers to facilitate return to work for injured employees and your MCO can assist you with these programs. Some of the most popular return to work programs include:

  • Creating a modified duty position: As discussed above, modified duty positions allow your injured employee to make a meaningful contribution to your company’s productivity while performing therapeutic tasks in the workplace.
  • Developing and implementing a Transitional Work Program (TWP): TWP is a tool that allows employers to accommodate the duty restrictions of an employee due to a workplace injury. Designed to transition an injured worker back to their full duty position within the company and tailored to fit their needs, this program can be developed with your MCO and helps to reduce lost time claims thus minimizing the impact on your workers’ compensation premiums.
  • Developing and implanting a Non-Profit Return to Work Placement Program: These programs assist in returning employees to work through temporary off-site job placements. These placements are typically made for workers in industries for which on-site modified duty is difficult or nearly impossible, such as construction, some manufacturing, and other industries that require intensive amounts of manual labor. Off-site placements are made with non-profit organizations in the community where the business operates, or the worker lives. Off-site placements allow employees to maintain a productive work lifestyle while transitioning to their regular jobs, decreasing workers’ compensation costs for the employer.
  • Vocational Rehabilitation: Vocational rehabilitation is typically implemented when an injury results in a significant loss of functional capacity and the injured employee is delayed or unable to return to their normal position. These injured employees may benefit from vocational rehabilitation services like transitional work, on-site therapy, functional capacity evaluations, and even new job placement.

A partner you can trust

Lost time is the one factor that has the most impact on Ohio workers’ compensation premiums. Therefore, it is essential that all the tools and strategies available are used as quickly and as often as possible. Your MCO serves both the best interest of your company and your employees. An MCO partner like Sheakley UniComp can guide you and your workers through the often-confusing world of workers’ compensation, helping your employees return to work quickly and safely.

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