The length of hospital stay of the industrial workers with back injury

산업재해 요통근로자의 재원기간에 관한 연구

Back injury is frequent in industry workers and is a common cause of productivity loss. It has been reported that the insured of industrial accident insurance tend to stay in hospital longer than that of other types of insurance. The purpose of this study was to identify factors affecting the length of hospital stay for the treatment of back injury in the workers under industrial accident insurance. The results of this study help insurers develop reasonable industrial accident insurance policy for back injury claims and prevention strategies of work-related back injury. A total of 2,949 patients whose industrial accident insurance claim has been approved for the treatment of work-related back injury from January to December 1999 were included in this study. Relationship between the length of hospital stay and characteristics of patient, work place, back injury, and hospital were assessed using ANOVA, t-test, simple linear regression and multiple resgression. The major findings of this study are as follows : 1. The average length of hospital stay(LOS) was 91.82 days, respectively. 2. Characteristics of Patient LOS of male patients was longer than that of female patients, there was positive correlation between age and LOS and between average wage and LOS. Working period was negatively correlated with LOS. Distance from resident to hospital was positively correlated with LOS and LOS was significantly different dependign on type of duty. 3. Characteristics of Work Place LOS was significantly different depending on types of industry and geographical region of work place. Size of work place was positively correlated with LOS. 4. Characteristics of Back Injury Occupational back pain required shorter LOS compared with back injury due to electric shock. Number of concomitant illnesses and severity of disability were positively correlated with LOS. 5. Characteristics of Hospital Patients treated in community hospitals required significantly longer LOS. Treatment in hospitals with rehabilitation program required decreased LOS. This was more prominent as number of physicians specialized in rehabilitation. 6. Multiple regression analysis revealed that distance form resident to hospital, geographical region of work place, size of work place, number of concomitant illnesses, severity of disability, and type of hospital were factors affecting LOS.