Development Team:
TIRR Rehabilitation Centers Industrial Medicine Program
TeleMedicine & Medical Informatics Engineering, Inc.
Telemedicine Technologies Company, LLC
Team Name: TIRR INDUSTRIAL REHABILITATION 2000
TIRR Industrial Medicine Program TeleRehab Phase I Systems Requirement and
Work Definition Plan
Getting injured people back to work as quickly and as safely as possible is the objective of The Institute for Rehabilitation Research (TIRR) Industrial Medicine Program TeleRehab project development. When the injured person returns to the job(workplace), TIRR, through TeleRehab, will work closely with the injured employee, the employee’s health care provider (Physiatrist), the employer, and, of course, the insurance carrier, to assist the employee to return to his pre-injury work performance level. TeleRehab will place the rehabilitation at the workplace where it should be, because a workplace-based rehabilitation provides the most realistic environment to assess work fitness and apply industrial medicine.
Early and effective workplace-based rehabilitation is instrumental in maintaining or returning injured employees to work, thereby minimizing costs associated with work-related injury.
Benefits for the employers include a reduction in compensation costs, retention of experienced and skilled employees and increased employee morale. Employee benefits include a decrease in loss of earnings and financial costs, in addition to a reduction in the psychological effects of work-related injury.
The State of Texas has been investigating using a telecommunications network to link rural workers with job-related injuries to specialists in the hopes of enhancing the workers compensation system and cutting costs, according to a research report by the Texas Research and Oversight Council (ROC) on Workers’ Compensation. One of the reasons the Council is interested in telemedicine is that workers who live in rural counties account for more than half of all workers compensation claims in Texas.
Texas allows an injured worker to choose the treating doctor. Telemedicine might produce important efficiencies in obtaining impairment ratings by ‘designated doctors’ whom workers and employer/insurers jointly choose to resolve impairment rating disputes. Resolutions of these cases may be helped by real-time videoconferencing where a video record of the exam could be used for future reference. Other benefits would include the cost-savings incurred from less travel, which insurers are required to pay.
