Physicians treating difficult shoulder, back, or knee musculoskeletal disorder injuries have typically been caught between a rock and a hard place. They desire to provide the appropriate treatment to patients, specify work restrictions, order effective rehabilitation, and return the employee to work at the earliest possible date without the threat of reinjury, which may lead to the levying of lawsuits.
Their use of traditional, yet subjective, functional capacity evaluations (FCEs) have acutely limited their objective diagnosis and treatment options. Many occupational medicine and orthopedic doctors have abandoned their use of functional capacity evaluations performed by physical therapists because the results were simply too subjective. They couldn't risk returning an injured or questionable injury patient to work if there was the slightest possibility of their original injury being aggravated.
This causes an intense level of frustration for insurance adjusters, risk managers, supervisors, and everyone else in a business responsible for both preventing and managing workers' compensation claims involving strains and sprains. To add salt to the wound, soft tissue injuries are very difficult to controvert (contest) when the employer is convinced the claim is either fake or the legitimate claimant is exaggerating the extent of his injury in order to receive a larger award and more time away from work - at the employer's expense!
There's a New Sheriff in Town
Technology has now caught up with the problems. Advances in isokinetic technology; a technology that measures muscle strength and function of the body's major joints and muscle systems, is so objective that a claimant's actual physical abilities can be accurately identified.
Orthopedic physicians have used isokinetic technology for over three decades. However, the technology has only been incorporated into the FCE process related to occupational exposures during the last few years. The technology has now advanced so far that it allows doctors to identify fraudulent and malingering back, shoulder, and knee injuries. Since muscles have no short-term memory, variations in the force curves generated during an isokinetic evaluation indicate the patient's true effort, or lack thereof, to demonstrate his physical status.
When claimants are clearly injured, their force curves will be consistent, even when the muscles are weak and injured. As the patient engages in progressive rehabilitation, both the strength and flexibility of the joint should improve dramatically over a 4-6 week period. If this does not happen, yet the FCE tests continue to show consistency in effort, the doctor then has objective data which indicates the need for further evaluation.
Isokinetic technology clearly saves on unnecessary surgeries, expensive physical therapy, and sorts out those patients not participating in their own recovery or engaged in malingering.
The Treating Doctor’s Best Objective Diagnostic Tool
The effective management of disabling or potentially disabling cumulative trauma disorders requires early intervention and strategic medical management.
Providing the treating doctor with early objective data will certainly aid in:
- Supporting a claimant's complaints
- Justifying work restrictions
- Supporting the need for further diagnostics
- Identifying an effective short-term rehabilitation model
The Nation's Most Advanced Isokinetic Functional Capacity Evaluations Model
State-of-the-art dynamometry development by Cost Reduction Technologies (CRT) (www.costreductiontech.com), combined with hands-on clinician evaluation of isokinetic evaluation results, permits treating doctors to have immediate objective, valid and consistent data to manage their musculoskeletal disorder patients.
The CRT isokinetic functional capacity evaluations include the standard flexibility, endurance, and pain notations combined with a full isokinetic test.
The objective report that follows in less than 24 hours permits the treating doctor to expertly assess the patient's progress, abilities, and need for further treatment or return-to-work. Restrictions, if any, will be objectively tied to the extent of continuing disability and not based on subjective pain complaints.
- CRT's FCE is the most objective, valid, and comprehensive functional capacity evaluation available.
- Clinical interpretation is returned to the treating doctor within 24 hours versus the typical 1-4 weeks.
- The patient is subjected to an (approximately) hour-long evaluation versus the 5-8 hours required for a subjective FCE.
- Work restrictions are validated through objective evaluation.
- Treating doctors will be able to return patients to work faster because of the reduced threat of malpractice that comes with accurate knowledge of the patient’s condition.
- Case managers will have objective data with which to manage the claimant's rehabilitation process
- CRT FCE is 25-50% less costly than traditional functional capacity evaluations.
Back Pain Relief from Back Pain Expert - Your prescription for back pain relief.™
Fine Search Your resource for IT certifications - Cisco, Microsoft, CompTIA and more