Digital Health Augmented Orthopedic Recovery in Worker’s Compensation Patients Demonstrates Good Engagement

Abstract

Research on orthopedic recovery for injured workers covered by the United States Worker’s Compensation System is limited, revealing challenges with poorer outcomes and low engagement.  Current literature shows non-compliance to home exercise plans as high as 70%.  One possible solution to address these challenges is through digital health solutions.  For example, Recupe from Plethy uses a mobile app paired with a sensor and a designed, live coach to enhance engagement and has been shown to improve home exercise adherence and outcomes in Group Health. This study followed 1018 injured workers over two years who used Recupe in conjunction with medical and physical therapy or occupational therapy care for their work injury recovery.  Analysis shows that 72% of injured workers engaged in the Recupe app at least 3 times per week, with 52 percent engaging over 75 percent of days.  Additionally, average pain scores improved 3.9 points out of 10. Digital health appears to improve an injured worker’s engagement and adherence to their home exercise plans.  Moreover, the observed pain improvement suggests progress in recovery.  Though injured workers were onboarded a day after referral, this averaged to be 44 days after the date of injury.  Such a delay likely slows recovery.  Despite this, digital health shows good promise and warrants further study in the Worker’s Compensation space. To summarize, digital health, tested with the Recupe solution, greatly improved engagement compared to previous research.  Thus, injured workers are more likely to follow a home exercise plan that healthcare practitioner have prescribed for their recovery.