Key Objectives:
1. Define presumption and how such laws might benefit in the acceptance of occupational disease claims. 2. Learn how epidemiologic principles can be applied to presumption.
Brief Summary:
Would developing a list of ‘presumed’ occupational diseases lead to more equitable workers compensation systems? Diseases caused by work represent a significant economic and social burden to workers afflicted. For many reasons, occupational diseases are poorly recognized by the medical community obscuring the employer’s responsibility to bear the costs of unsafe workplaces through workers compensation. Costs may be shifted or distributed to other social insurance systems or to the worker. In most workers’ compensation systems, work must ‘on a more probable than not basis’ be considered the cause of the workers’ disease. Generally the burden of proof falls on the worker to demonstrate that work contributed to or caused the worker’s disease. While some might consider the legal standard for causation low, the realities of the U.S. health care system and research priorities make achievement of the standard onerous. Health care providers generally receive little training on obtaining an occupational exposure history or on the contribution of workplace hazardous exposures in causing common diseases. Historical hazardous exposures in the work environment are often poorly documented limiting detailed exposure data. Inadequacies of funding and prioritization of occupational health surveillance and research activities limit the research supportive of work as a causative agent in disease. In other words, the worker shoulders the burden not only of the disease but of an inadequate occupational health system in proving their occupational disease claim. Presumptive coverage laws are a means to reducing a workers’ barrier to obtaining workers compensation benefits for occupational diseases. This roundtable will
- discuss the value in creating a list of ‘presumed’ occupational diseases.
- review how other nations approach assigning specific diseases as being caused from work.
- review epidemiologic considerations for causation of disease.
- explore possible criteria that could be used to establish a list of presumed occupational diseases.
- determine CSTE occupational health workgroup interest in this topic.