Groups of the High-burden Occupational Disease

Abstract

   The objective of this study was to explore characteristics of groups of the high-burden occupational disease and its disease proportion priority and then use that information for decision making on resource allocation in occupational medicine practices. The method comprised of defining needed information of the studied population, developing a studied tool, analyzing data of 298 patients from the diagnosed reports 2017 under the responsibility of Thailand workmen’s compensation fund for grouping patients according to their common characters, assessing and concluding a result. In a Thai context, high-burden occupational diseases distributed in the four disease groups: Group 1 the injury, Group 2 the illnesses, Group 3 the biomechanical injuries and chronic cumulative injuries/illnesses, and Group 4 the psychosocial health problems. The highest disease incidence was from the Group 1. The number-one high-burden occupational disease of this studied population was the injury and illness of the musculoskeletal system utilizing 77.4% of total high-cost medical treatment expense. The researcher proposes that there should have a project, to define a standard definition of the occupational hazards those cause the big Four Disease Groups, and to support the disease incidence information collection according to those established groups. Then, the responsible organizations could have
had that crucial information for the allocation of physicians and resources and to support the development of knowledge packages for individuals accordingly. All these aims at an effective reducing the incidence of disease.