Corpus Christi, TX – A new disability benchmarking report based on data from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) quantifies the total cost of disability in the workforce. For U.S. employers in 2000 it shows that, for all conditions together, direct disability lost-time costs were $91,360 per 100 workers, total disability lost-time costs (including indirect costs) were $458,150 per 100 workers, and medical costs were $268,539 per 100 workers. Including indirect costs, lost-time costs exceed medical costs by a substantial margin. Counting only direct costs, medical costs are higher. In either case, this information should re-enforce the efforts of employers to maximize the health and productivity of their workforce.

The report, called Disability Benchmarks by Major Diagnostic Category, was prepared by Work Loss Data Institute (WLDI) to answer the question "How are we doing?", which is increasingly being asked by employers, disability insurers, and consultants. The report is based on data compiled by the CDC National Center for Healthcare Statistics (NCHS), extracted from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS: covering disability lost work-days) and the Health Care Utilization Project (HCUP: covering medical costs), two of the major source databases for Official Disability Guidelines. To prepare the report WLDI mapped the raw ICD9 data in these databases to the 25 Major Diagnostic Categories (MDC) which are commonly used in benchmarking.

Detailed lost work-day information is provided for each MDC, including any unscheduled absence due to illness or injury. For each MDC, the report provides mean (average), median (mid-point), mode (most frequent single number), total cases in the sample, percent of total cases represented by that MDC, total calendar lost work-days, percent of total calendar lost work-days represented by that MDC, days per 100 workers, benchmark direct lost-time costs per 100 workers using average weekly wages, and benchmark total lost-time costs per 100 workers using a standard multiplier for indirect costs. When sorted by percent of total calendar lost work-days represented by that MDC, "Pregnancy & Childbirth" is the largest, representing almost 24% of total lost work-days. Next is "Musculoskeletal" at 21% and "Circulatory" at 15%. When sorted by number of cases, "Respiratory" is first, representing 21% of all cases. Respiratory conditions are more frequent causes of missed work, but their durations tend to be shorter than pregnancy, musculoskeletal, or circulatory.

Numbers are summarized for all MDC’s showing that total lost-work days, for any unscheduled absence due to illness or injury (including sick leave, short and long term disability, and workers’ compensation), add up to 850 days per 100 workers (or 8.5 days per worker, equating to an absence rate of 3.4% assuming 250 work-days annually). This does not include scheduled absences (e.g., vacation, holidays, certain leave-of-absence) or unscheduled absences due to other causes (e.g., personal reasons, care of a family member, "no-shows", absences caused by an "entitlement" mentality).

The report also contains medical costs for each MDC, with data on average cost, total cases, percent of total cases, total U.S. cost, percent of total U.S. cost, and cost per 100 workers using the current U.S. working population of 134,400,000. When sorted by total cost, "Circulatory" is first, followed by "Respiratory", "Injuries", "Digestive", "Musculoskeletal", and "Pregnancy" is sixth.

The report also shows median, mean, and number of days at each decile for every MDC, assuming a 7-day waiting period, a 14-day waiting period, and a 21-day waiting period. For benchmarking, users should choose a waiting period that is consistent with their own benefit structure. These tables eliminate cases that return to work in less time than the waiting period because those cases would never have been reported. When sorted by average disability duration, "Pregnancy" is the highest, and "Nervous System", "Musculoskeletal", and "Circulatory" are 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th. When sorted by "outlier", using the number of days at the 90^th percentile, "H.I.V.", "Trauma", "Alcohol/Drug Abuse", and "Mental" are the highest. The report also shows the number of cases where workers had an MDC condition, but they did not miss any work. Conditions most likely to cause missed work are "Pregnancy" first, followed by "H.I.V.", "Trauma", "Burns", and "Infectious Diseases".

The 30-page WLDI special report, entitled Disability Benchmarks by Major Diagnostic Category investigates the differences, norms, distributions and outliers by Major Diagnostic Category based on 1,080,699 cases representing 10,630,533 lost work-days from the CDC National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and 30,300,022 cases from the CDC Health Care Utilization Project (HCUP), using the most recent available data. It is available in both electronic and hardcopy formats for $150.