Development and initial application of a harmonised multi-jurisdiction work injury compensation database

Area of Science:

• Occupational Health
• Health Services Research
• Data Science

Background:

• Workers' compensation schemes fund wage replacement and healthcare for injured workers in Australia.
• Independent jurisdictional operation of these schemes hinders comparative analysis of health service utilization.
• A need exists for harmonized data to enable cross-jurisdictional comparisons and research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and deploy a novel database integrating health service and income support data.
• To harmonize data from multiple Australian workers' compensation jurisdictions.
• To facilitate a greater understanding of health service use within the Australian workers' compensation sector.

Main Methods:

• Collaboration with workers' compensation authorities across six Australian jurisdictions.
• Integration of claims, healthcare, medicines, and wage replacement data for musculoskeletal conditions.
• Design of a structured relational database and a bespoke health services coding scheme for data harmonization.

Main Results:

• The Multi-Jurisdiction Workers' Compensation Database includes claims, services, medicines, and wage replacement datasets.
• Analysis of 158,946 claims, primarily for low back pain, limb fractures, and non-specific limb conditions.
• Inclusion of 4.2 million harmonized services, with physical therapists and doctors being the most frequent providers; 39.8% of dispensed medicines were opioid analgesics.

Conclusions:

• The developed database offers significant potential for understanding health service utilization in Australian workers' compensation.
• It provides a method for measuring the impact of policy changes on health services.
• Future research can leverage this database and explore linkage with additional data sources for enhanced insights.