• Workability's growing national network of independently-owned rehabilitation units actively addresses all barriers that prevent workers, injured patients and patients suffering from back and/or neck pain getting back to work and life.

• All referring Doctors are given access to the Workability web-based IT System that allows them to access all their referred patients' treatment history.

• Workability employs case managers that oversee the patients return to life journey so Doctors can stay informed of patients' recovery at all times.

• Workability has effectively worked with more than 1500 companies and treated over 30 000 patients with a 95% return-to-work average.

Workability is a market-leading health care company that has pioneered multidisciplinary rehabilitation in South Africa.

Workability uses innovative technology and evidence-based clinical protocols to streamline the process of getting injured patients back to work and life, thereby directly reducing the cost to all stakeholders of absenteeism, injury and disability.

Workability contracts occupational and physiotherapists as case managers. These case managers use the Workability IT system to review all the network practice therapists' compliance with evidence-based clinical pathways, outcome measures and return-to-work statistics.

The Workability Back and Neck Assistance Program (BNAP), targeted at medical funders, has been designed to strategically manage high-risk back and neck cases that would otherwise often end up in surgery. Through early intervention, this program reduces the incidence of radiology, hospitalisation, back and neck surgery, and repeat surgery as well as long term reduction in costs associated with back and neck pain such as the use of analgesics and opiates.

The BNAP evidence-based, active rehabilitation program provides physiotherapists and occupational therapists with the framework to improve the patient's pain management techniques and normalise function for patients who have acute, sub-acute, chronic or post-operative back and/or neck pain.

The Work Rehabilitation Assistance Program (WRAP) has been designed to strategically manage high-risk musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) patients that often end up in surgery and/or having ongoing costly medical interventions. Back, neck, hips, knees, hands and shoulders are the biggest MSD cost drivers for medical funders.

The WRAP program provides an early intervention rehabilitation framework that uses evidence-based clinical care pathways and stratified rehabilitation streams to ensure that the correct patient gets the correct treatment at the correct time in their recovery process.

WHY WRAP?

One out of eight people of working age will have a work absence in a year due to an MSD, which makes MSDs the most prevalent cause of work absence and medical visits worldwide.

In South Africa, the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders has not been prioritised due to the burden of communicable diseases. However, this focus must change and is changing in order to manage the hospital-centric behaviour and increasing cost associated with the years lived with MSD disability.

WHAT MAKES THIS PROGRAM DIFFERENT FROM USUAL CARE?

Studies show that diagnosis alone does not predict medical service needs, length of hospitalisation, level of care or functional outcomes. This means that if we use a medical classification of diagnoses alone, we will not have the information we need for health planning and management purposes.

Over the last decade Workability has developed the WRAP risk stratified framework to focus on a value based, return to work and life outcome as opposed to the current usual care model of impairment focused care. The WRAP framework has been designed using key aspects of the World Health Organisations ICF model, international best practice guidelines and local South African realities.

Patients entering this program will be treated by a multidisciplinary team that interacts with all associated stakeholders, to steer patients towards self-management behaviour in order to improve the patient's quality of life while reducing the high medical spend.

The stratified approach allows for a predetermined case cost estimate after the first consultation, which can be measured against value-based outcomes.