Early-Early Intervention in Rhode Island: Helping Workers Compensation Recipients Return to Work

Abstract

“Early-early intervention” is the term given to the strategy of identifying persons shortly after they have experienced workplace injuries and expeditiously providing them rehabilitation and returnto- work services, to help them return to the workforce and avoid ever applying for disability insurance (DI) benefits. This project seeks to determine whether there are characteristics of work injury claimants that predict their future enrollment in the DI program by matching a data set of ten years of workers compensation claims in Rhode Island with the Social Security Administration Master Beneficiary Record and Supplemental Security Record. It is anticipated that this data link and analysis will provide the researchers with the information they need to predict accurately which injured workers will eventually receive DI benefits so that rehabilitation and return to work services can be targeted at these claimants shortly after their injuries occur.