Screening manual and office workers for risk of long-term sickness absence: cut-off points for the Work Ability Index

Predicting long-term sickness absence among employees with frequent sickness absence

“…Health-related variables may improve the predictions of long-term SA among frequent absentees. Furthermore, several studies have shown that work ability is a predictor of future long-term SA (Roelen et al 2018; Reeuwijk et al 2015; Schouten et al 2015, 2016). We did not include work ability in the present study, because it was not measured in all occupational health surveys.…”

Approaches for predicting long-term sickness absence. Re: Schouten et al. “Screening manual and office workers for risk of long-term sickness absence: cut-off points for the Work Ability Index”

“…2015;41(3): 322-323. doi:10.5271/sjweh.3483 We read with much interest the article of Schouten et al (1) on identifying workers with a high risk for future long-term sickness absence using the Work Ability Index (WAI). The ability to identify high-risk workers might facilitate targeted interventions for such workers and, consequently, can reduce sickness absence levels and improve workers' health.…”

“…This phenomenon is even more clearly illustrated by the predictive properties of the workability index, as described by Alavinia et al (7, page 328), which reported that "when adjusted for individual characteristics, lifestyle factors, and work characteristics, two dimensions of the WAI were significant predictors for both moderate and long durations of sickness absence: (i) the presence of sickness absence in the past 12 months prior to the medical examination and (ii) experienced limitations due to health problems." So, when applied to the study by Schouten et al (1), this means that most of the predictive value would be related to the factors "sickness absence in the past 12 months".…”

Re: Amelsvoort et al. “Approaches for predicting long-term sickness absence”

“…2015;41(3):324. doi:10.5271/sjweh. 3481 We would like to thank Van Amelsvoort et al (1) for the interest in our study (2) and take the opportunity to clarify here that none of the workers were sick-listed when they participated in the baseline health survey. We mentioned in the abstract that incident (ie, not prevalent) long-term sickness absence was retrieved from an occupational health register (2).…”

“…3481 We would like to thank Van Amelsvoort et al (1) for the interest in our study (2) and take the opportunity to clarify here that none of the workers were sick-listed when they participated in the baseline health survey. We mentioned in the abstract that incident (ie, not prevalent) long-term sickness absence was retrieved from an occupational health register (2). Our explanation of how to interpret the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve as measure of discrimination between workers with and without long-term sickness absence might have given the impression that the study population was a mix of workers with and without sickness absence.…”