Australians are significantly less likely to claim GP visits for psychological illnesses on workers’ compensation than they are for physical work-related injuries, according to research conducted by the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR).

 

Conducted in partnership with the University of Sydney, the research examined 486,000 GP visits around Australia between 2004 and 2009, with doctors recording whether the patient’s health problem was work-related and whether the visit was being claimed through worker’s compensation.

 

ISCRR’s Chief Research Officer, Dr Alex Collie, said that over 22 per cent of workers didn’t make compensation claims even though their GP had determined that the illness was work-related.

 

"There are a number of reasons we are seeing work-related conditions not being claimed," Dr Collie said.

 

"It could be that workers are less willing to claim for psychological conditions compared with physical conditions because of potential for stigma in the workplace. Workers' may also be unaware they can make a workers' compensation claim."

 

Location also seems to be a serious influence on whether a claim is made, with claims much more likely to be made in a city or inner regional area when compared to outer regional and remot regions.

 

Dr Helena Britt from the Family Medicine Research Centre at the University of Sydney said this was one of the first investigations into the nature of GP treated occupational health problems that are claimed and not claimed through workers' compensation.

 

"Assessment and management of work-related health problems are an important part of a GP's role. The BEACH dataset we used allows us to analyse the wide range of problems that GPs judge to be work related," she said.