More vigorous research needed into effects of compensation on injury outcomes

Conducted by Dr Meaghan O’Donnell, from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, and her co-authors, the study included 391 randomly selected patients with moderate-to-severe injuries.

The study is published in the latest Medical Journal of Australia.

Dr O’Donnell said that after controlling for baseline variables, compensable patients had higher levels of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression at 24 months, and were less likely to have returned to their pre-injury number of work hours.

However, some patients in the non-compensable group had accessed other forms of compensation, such as private health insurance or compensation for victims of crime. When these were removed from the non-compensable group, the differences between the two groups disappeared.

“It would seem that the inclusion, in the non-compensable group, of patients receiving other forms of compensation meant that people with no compensation at all appeared to have better health outcomes than they actually did,” Dr O’Donnell said.

The findings suggested that the relationship between compensation and health outcomes was far more complex than previously thought, and more high-level research was needed, Dr O’Donnell said.

“Our findings do not support previous research showing that access to compensation is associated with poor recovery outcomes,” she said.

“At the very least, these results suggest that studies examining compensable health outcomes need to have a rigorous methodology and to ensure that any patients classified as non-compensable have not in fact accessed other forms of compensation.”

The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.

^{_{The statements or opinions that are expressed in the MJA  reflect the views of the authors and do not represent the official policy of the AMA unless that is so stated.}}

CONTACT:   Dr Meaghan O’Donnell            0423 192 219