Risk Assessment for Prolonged Sickness Absence Due to Musculoskeletal Conditions

Musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions are a leading cause of years lived with disability worldwide and for the last decade they have also been the most common cause of sickness absence and disability pension in Norway.

Although most sickness absence is short-termed, a small proportion of people with MSK conditions are on long-term sick leave, contributing to large cost due to disbursement of benefits, productivity loss and extensive use of health care. There is growing evidence that long-term sickness absence is harmful to mental and physical health, with a reduced probability of return to work (RtW) with prolonged sickness absence. Thus, focusing on early RtW in people on sick leave due to MSK conditions is important to reduce the burden on both the individual and the society. However, to provide interventions to reduce the duration of sickness absence to all people on sick leave would require enormous resources. By targeting those at risk of long-term sickness absence, resources may be used differently, e.g. more resource-saving. By using information on modifiable risk factors from simple risk assessment tools, health care providers and other stakeholders may facilitate RtW in a better way.

The overall purposes of this project are 1) to identify the most accurate screening tool to identify people at a high risk of prolonged sickness absence due to a MSK condition, and 2) to investigate severity of MSK health, health-related quality-of-life, health care consumption, and costs across different risk profiles in people on sick leave due to MSK conditions. We will use registered data on sickness absence from 1 year before to 1 year after inclusion in the study.