Impact of an alcohol misuse intervention for health care workers - 2: Employee assistance programme utilization, on-the-job injuries, job loss and health services utilization

Abstract

Aims: We evaluated the effects of an enhanced substance misuse (SM) prevention/early intervention programme on referrals to a employee assistance programme, health care utilization rates, on-the-job injury rates and job termination rates among health care professionals employed in a managed care organization. Methods: The intervention was implemented at one site, with the remaining sites serving as the comparison group. Existing data from hospital databases were used to compare events occurring in the periods before and after initiation of the intervention. To account for baseline differences in age, gender and job class, logistic regression models produced adjusted means for events per employee month-at-risk. Results: We found that employee assistance referrals and non-SM-related in-patient hospitalizations increased significantly post-intervention, while rates of total out-patient SM-related visits decreased at both the intervention and comparison sites post-intervention. There was a small, statistically significant decrease in the monthly rate (OR = 0.92) of non-SM out-patient utilization at the intervention site, once the intervention was in place. No differences potentially attributable to the intervention were detected injob turnover or injury rates. Conclusions: We conclude that, while the intervention did not appear to affect health care utilization for SM-related problems, it was associated with increased referrals for employee assistance.