"The Big Picture" Newsletter

October 2007 Issue

CIGNA Analysis Shows Integrated Medical and Disability Programs Improve Return-to-Work Rates, Productivity

Individuals covered by CIGNA's integrated medical and disability programs who have taken a short-term disability leave are more likely to return to work, according to newly released research by CIGNA. In fact, the study shows marked improvement in return-to-work rates for these claimants of at least five percent and up to 37 percent, as compared to their counterparts in non-integrated, disability-only plans.

CIGNA's analysis demonstrates that employees with disability claims make up only a small percentage (five percent) of the total employee population yet represent 37 percent of total employee medical costs. Further, 80 percent of employees with disability claims also fall into the top 20 percent of health care spenders. This highlights the need to assist employees with disabilities, or potential disabilities, as a means to contain health care costs.

More than 80 percent of employees included in the analysis who were disabled had chronic and/or lifestyle-related conditions. The most expensive and frequent conditions driving both medical and disability costs included musculoskeletal problems and heart disease. In this analysis, participants in CIGNA’s disease management programs for heart disease and low back pain had a lower rate of occurrence of disability and shorter duration for disabilities that did occur.

Findings from the analysis also suggest that use of Family Medical Leave (FML) may help predict future disability claims. Employees on FML were five times more likely to have a subsequent short-term disability claim than those not on FML (24 percent vs. 4.5 percent). Further, those on FML for a family reason were 50 percent more likely to have a subsequent short-term disability claim for behavioral illness than those on FML for other reasons.

The analysis included claim data from 40 accounts, comprising 300,000 employees, over a two-year period. The 40 accounts included those that had integrated medical and disability benefits, those that had both medical and disability coverage through CIGNA, but who did not integrate the programs, as well as CIGNA Group Insurance- and CIGNA HealthCare-only accounts.