Products & Services >> Return-to-Work Screens Return-to-Work Screens An injured worker typically receives a course of acute care treatment. Once that course of treatment is compete the physician must decide whether his patient is ready to return to full duty. The patient shows up for his follow up visit. The doctor spends 5 minutes reading notes from the treating therapist. Range of motion is improved, pain is decreased, The MRI looks unchanged and the patient states he is better but still hurts. The physician asks him if he feels ready to go back to work and the patient says: “I don’t know doc. You’re the expert. What do you think?” This all too familiar scenario, is the way most return to work decisions are made. Without objective information on the patient’s abilities and the physical demands of the job, the physician’s decisions are purely speculative. The injured worker may get sent back to work too early, or held out from work longer than necessary. The employer loses either way, which means the cost of doing business increases – just because poor return-to-work decisions are made.

Now let’s consider a better decision making process – a process in which return-to-work decisions are made based on functional testing. ErgoScience’s research-based FCE (Functional Capacity Evaluation) is easily adapted to serve as a brief functional return-to-work screen, which is performed by health professionals as part of ongoing and discharge evaluations. A brief table of patient abilities and job demands (click her for an example) can be easily inserted in to the discharge summary providing objective, unbiased information on which to base return-to-work decisions, thus saving money for the employer and creating a better outcome for employees.

Interested in ErgoScience’s Return-to-Work Screens? Contact us.



Read Deborah Lechner’s published article in the May/June 2009 Issue of PT Products Magazine.




<< back to  Products & Services