Compensation is bad for health?
Reference:Spearing NM, Connelly LB. Is compensation “bad for health”? A systematic meta-review. Injury. 2011 Jan;42(1):15-24. Epub 2010 Jan 8.
Based on a number of studies I?ve always accepted the fact that injury compensation had a negative impact on recovery.
To be honest I almost dread seeing patients who have a pending legal battle either with workers compensation or with their car insurance company. I subconsciously become pessimistic, and foresee that my treatments will fail to help these patients.
Have I been wrong and badly biased? The most recent paper on this topic looked at 11 systematic reviews and showed that 9 of the reviews reported an association between compensation and poor health outcomes, however all of them were considered to be of low quality.
The controversy comes as a higher quality review found strong evidence of no association between litigation and poor recovery in patients following whiplash.
Funny how something I accepted as ‘fact’ is now ‘debatable’. Perhaps litigation and compensation do not always predict poor health outcomes …perhaps I?ve been presumptuous and wrong!
I can’t wait to see what 2012 studies say about this topic.
Posted on: December 15, 2011
Categories: Fascinating Pain Studies
