Preventing injuries and implementing an effective Injury and Illness Prevention Program is the best way to protect workers from sustaining a work injury and should be your first priority. However, injuries do occur. Implementing a Return To Work program is one of the most effective ways to manage injuries, control workers’ compensation costs and reduce lost work time. A return to work program can reduce the effects of disability and absenteeism in the workplace and facilitate the earliest possible safe return of an injured employee to the workplace, to perform meaningful, productive work within their physical capabilities. For more information on how to implement a Return To Work Program for your company, please call (866) 472-9602

Return to Work Definitions

Terminology used when developing a return to work program is provided below.

Modified Work: Involves changes to the original job duties - changing the workstation or tools, removing tasks that the employee cannot perform, reducing the time spend on a particular task (for example, 15 minutes rest for every hour doing data entry on computer), moving the location of the job to avoid dusts or other exposures.

Alternate Work: Involves moving the employee to another position within the company that meets the physical limitations caused by the injury or illness. This type of work would ordinarily accommodate most common temporary physical limitations.

Transitional Work: Includes assignments that meet the specific medical restrictions set by the doctor, while allowing the employee to perform either some of the original job or a different job that the employer has identified. Transitional work should be evaluated frequently, in close communication with the employee and treating physician. The goal is to progressively match the workers’ capabilities as function is restored after an injury.

Important Notice - Workplace Modification Reimbursement

Assembly Bill 749 and Senate Bill 899, provides incentives to return injured employees to work, if the business has fewer than 50 full-time employees.

If the workplace injury occurs on or after July 1, 2004, employers can receive a maximum $1,250 reimbursement to cover the expense of workplace modifications that allow temporarily disabled workers to return to work. A maximum $2,500 reimbursement may be available to an employer who makes accommodations to return a permanently disabled worker to work.

Reimbursement will be paid through a fund administered by the Division of Workers’ Compensation. The total maximum reimbursement cannot exceed $2,500.

Reimbursable expenses can include:

• Physical modifications to the worksite
• Tools
• Equipment
• Furniture
• Any other costs for accommodating the employee’s medically prescribed restrictions.

Important Notice – Permanent Disability Benefits for Return to Work

If the employer, before the end of the permanent disability payout, terminates the employee, the decrease is eliminated and payments are increased 15 percent over the normal benefit payment amount. If the employee voluntarily terminates employment, he or she does not get the increase, and the decrease remains in place.