Mismanaged back pain puts strain on businesses

Shelley Hampton, a certified post-rehab and conditioning specialist, is owner, group fitness instructor and personal trainer at Shape Shifters Pilates Exercise Studio.

Low back pain affects 60 percent to 80 percent of Americans every year. Most people recover within six weeks, but a significant number 15 percent continue to suffer for an average of six months. This minority accounts for 90 percent of treatment expenses for low-back pain in America's work force.

What prevents this 15 percent minority from returning to work for so long? Why does this group run up more than two-thirds of total employer costs including worker's compensation, case management and lost productivity?

These questions plague business owners, human resource directors, safety management teams, health benefits coordinators and corporate wellness practitioners, all of whom must prevent costs from hurting profits.

Research conducted during the past few years indicates a troubling trend: the incidence of lower back pain in the workplace is actually increasing. Advancing technology in diagnosis and treatment has reduced neither lower-back trouble nor costs. In fact, the gap between current treatment and improvement may even be widening.

Clearly, America's businesses simply must stop the loss of billions of dollars each year to the treatment of lower-back pain. Consumers cannot continue to accept price increases on American-made products as an inevitable reflection of this extreme cost of doing business. Grocery prices have risen to cover the cost of back treatment at grocery distribution centers. American automobile prices currently reflect more than $1,000 per unit spent on health and injury care for manufacturing employees.

It doesn't make sense. Why can't Americans who are basically healthy and gainfully employed avoid these costly injuries? At the very least, why can't the first episode be treated, healed and the employee protected against future recurrence?

Because there is more to it than just low-back pain itself.

Of low-back pain sufferers who have no previous experience with back problems, as many as 62 percent will have a second episode within a year. These are people who underwent a traditional treatment regimen of bed rest, medication and some sort of physical therapy and then returned to work.

Still, within four years, nearly half of low-back pain patients 45 percent have at least one significant recurrence, often much worse and even more difficult to treat than the first. Medical practitioners are as puzzled by this high recurrence rate as are corporate managers and employees.

However, research has revealed four key factors that interfere with successful long-term treatment for lower-back pain. The last is a function of individual behavior, but three factors are staples of standard medical treatment:

over-prescription of bed rest;

extraordinary emphasis on diagnosing structural problems; and

overuse of prescription medication and surgery.

Fortunately, effective alternatives exist, which I'll explore in upcoming articles.