Matheson Philosophy on Workplace Safety and Work Injury Evaluation

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We have safely completed our Grand Canyon trek! I want to share with you a few of the dozens of lessons learned on this trip.

When an employee is out (whether it is WC or Disability) is it OK to have an inconsistent policy on how they come back? For example:

I left this morning at 3:30 in the morning for Arizona. Our group will spend Saturday night at a lodge on the South Rim before beginning our trek before dawn on Sunday.

Our route this year starts at the Yaki Point drop off to the South Kaibab Trail. It is 7.1 miles (11.5 km) to the Black Bridge on the Colorado River. Phantom Ranch is about another mile across the river.

I have had questions about the technical details of my experience with Grand Canyon. Responses to those questions appear here and in future blogs.

We will continue our discussion from last week on the resources physicians use to make decisions regarding patient care, in light of the article Motivation Determination (Sincerity Of Effort): The Performance APGAR Model, published in Disability Medicine (Vol. 1, No. 2, September-December 2001). We will begin where we left off, going into more detail on the elements of the Performance APGAR: Acceptance, Pain, Gut, Acting, and Reimbursement. The following are summaries of each component:

There are many resources physicians use to make decisions regarding patient care.  In the arena of Workman’s Compensation cases, particularly when assessing factors such as “effort”, “credibility”, “motivation determination” and functional ability, there are few tools that purport to make determinations such as the Performance APGAR.  According to the original article Motivation Determination (Sincerity Of Effort): The Performance APGAR Model, published in Disability Medicine (Vol. 1, No. 2, September-December 2001), this relatively simple tool can be used to “measure the amount of personal commitment and effort the patient has expended to improve their condition” (Colledge, Holmes, Soo Hoo, et al). 

Interested in how the physician's role in return-to-work decisions is changing in light of the new ADAAA? Join me this Thursday at 2pm EST while I examine this hot topic!