Public Policy Goals

The Robert Wood Johnson Workers’ Compensation Health Initiative funded projects that had an opportunity of improving the accessibility of high quality of medical care for injured and ill workers.

Prompt, timely medical care for workers and effective communication of health and work status from health care provider to employee and employer should speed return to work, result in lower costs for employers and result in better physical and financial outcomes for workers. These are the overall goals of most workers compensation systems. Most of the projects can be broken into the following public policy goals:

Projects relating to improving access to care can be found here.

Projects relating to the integration of benefits that may reduce costs, speed the provision of treatment and improve communication regarding health and work status can be found here.

Projects designed to improve workers compensation medical care practice patterns, costs, and patient outcomes can be found here.

Projects to explore the design and creation of a state resource for the study of or to give focus to the measuring and improving the quality of medical care for injured and ill workers can be found here.

Projects to evaluate the impact or feasibility of 24-hour health care programs can be found here.

Projects that resulted from Community Coalitions to improve medical care delivery and speed return to work for workers can be found here.

Tools developed by these projects are listed and available on this page. These include survey forms; forms that aide in communication of health status and work readiness; forms that can be used by health care providers or employers to gather data; suggested measures of quality and instructions on how to implement and test them; and other instruments and information.