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At present, there are approximately 5.5 million veterans of working age who have disabilities, but the number may be higher due to underreporting and underdiagnosis.

In this issue we celebrate our annual National Workers' Compensation and Disability Management Award and shine the light on private, nonprofit and government sector programs doing commendable work in instituting safety and injury prevention measures, and efficiently managing workers' comp and disability programs.

A transitional period of light-duty work -- or even off-site volunteering -- may help injured workers get back to full-duty faster.

Most companies do not attempt to track savings from using rehabilitation services for employees.

In South Carolina, a worker is entitled to disability benefits if she failed to obtain employment because of a work injury and she made reasonable efforts to obtain employment.

More injured workers returned to work after receiving a lump-sum settlement than exited the workforce, says a new study. The findings offer answers about the effect of settlements on return-to-work efforts.

These are the sessions in the Better Claims Management track.

Injured workers who perceive they have lost control over their lives are more susceptible to becoming long-term disabled patients, according to a workers' comp veteran. Stakeholders can help prevent disability mentality by sending the right messages.

"Twenty percent of claims cause 80 percent of pain," says Robert Aurbach. "These are people who, for no physical reason, have fallen into this morass of disability behavior and become a disabled person to themselves and deal with the world that way. It becomes a habit of mind and behavior that is incredibly hard to fix once it is established."

The Bureau of Workers' Compensation proposed amendments to rules regarding the comprehensive discount program that focuses on return to work for injured workers.

Since case management involves injured workers, it makes sense to include the employee in the process, right? That's part of the strategy behind a disability management program that's seeing the majority of injured workers return to employment.

Thinking outside the box has helped make the Imperial Irrigation District's disability management program highly successful. One component, for example, is offering emotional help to employees who are suddenly homebound.

Safety and wellness programs are generally separate within an organization. Combining them could improve the overall health of employees and help reduce workers' comp costs, suggests recent research.

The Department of Labor and Industries proposed rules regarding the new stay-at-work program established by the legislature.

The challenging economy is leading to longer disability durations, adding to employers' workers' comp costs, but by focusing on systems that enhance return to work and avoiding those that create barriers, workers' comp participants can minimize the impact, according to a new report.

In Louisiana, an injured worker's request for penalties and attorney's fees for her employer's termination of her benefits can be denied when a doctor opines that she could return to work without restrictions and she exaggerated her symptoms.

As the economy recovers from recession, employers may still face challenges in their return-to-work programs.

Restricting activities of injured workers with low back pain not only hampers return-to-work efforts, it may actually fly in the face of academic and scientific evidence, according to a medical/legal workers' comp expert.

Physicians trying to determine whether, when, and how to return injured workers to their places of employment are the focus of an updated publication from the American Medical Association.

This new wave of claims management and return-to-work specialists are compassionate investigators, seeking to fix systems and processes, and not to assign blame.