Abstract

Background:There is increasing commitment to improve health of working populations in order to reduce the amount of claims for sickness and disability benefits.The aim of this paper was to examine sickness absence trends in the Republic of Ireland as reported by medical certification on the claiming of illness benefit over a seven year period, namely 2008 to 2014.
Methods:Data were extracted by the Statistical unit of the Department of Social Protection from their central database to include all claims for illness and occupational injury benefit between 2008 and 2014 and presented to the researcher. This data was recoded using broad codes contained in the ICD-10 and combined into a database where summative values were produced under each classification in order to evaluate the average rate of claims per 1000 person employed per year.
Results:A total of 67,021 illness benefit claims were made in 2014 compared to 73,609 in 2008. When the total workforce was considered this represented a total reduction from 34.2 claims per 1000 person employed (2008) to 30 claims per 1000 employed (2014). Mental and behavioural disorders (FF00-F99) had the highest rate of illness benefit claims resulting in 8.8 claims per 1000 persons employed in 2008 to 8.2 claims per 1000 persons employed in 2014. Disease of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue (M00-M99) had the second highest rate of claims overall. The most likely reason given under the ICD-code M00-M99 was back/neck/rib and disc problems which accounted for 62.7% of all claims in the 7 year period. The main reason for occupational injury claims were for injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external cause (S00-T98) followed by diseases of the musculoskeletal and connective tissue (M00-M99).
Conclusion:Results of this study should be taken into account for future planning of primary healthcare in the Republic of Ireland and for training of GPs in practice.