Discretionary Surgery: A Comparison of Workers' Compensation and Commercial Insurance.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Workers' compensation is intended for injuries that occur at work and is expected to be mostly for trauma and mostly nondiscretionary conditions. We tested the null hypothesis that there is no difference in the ratio of likely discretionary to likely nondiscretionary surgery between patients treated under workers' compensation compared with commercial insurance controlling for age, sex, and anatomical site for either traumatic or nontraumatic diagnoses.

Methods

Using claims data from the Texas workers' compensation database and Truven Health commercial claims we classified International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) diagnoses and procedure codes as likely discretionary or likely

SUBMITTER: van der Gronde BATD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6346365 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature