back injury.
(Brian McDonald)
For the vast majority of injured U.S. workers, rehabilitation ushers them back to work within three months after an injury.
But in about 10 percent of workers’ compensation cases nationally, traditional physical therapy doesn’t work. Rhode Island has a solution to these cases that is unique to state workers’ comp programs: The Donley Center.
The center — part of the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training — is funded by a portion of the workers’compensation premiums paid by every Rhode Island company. Via physician referrals, the center takes the state’s toughest workers’-compensation cases: Nearly 70 percent of Donley Center patients have been out of work for at least six months. Almost half have been out for more than a year.
In a renovated brick mansion on Blackstone Boulevard in Providence, center therapists go beyond the standard rubber balls and swimming-pool exercises associated with physical therapy.
“For the people that come here, physical rehabilitation has not been the answer,” said E. Jean Severance, associate director of the DLT’s Division of Injured Worker Services. “We need to connect more of the dots.”
That might include psychological counseling to help injured workers cope with the physical pain, financial troubles and family problems that often accompany work-related injuries. The center also offers on-site medical evaluations to help pinpoint underlying causes of work-related injuries, such as hypertension or diabetes.
In the center’s “work-hardening” room, therapists oversee drills that attempt to mimic regular work duties. Patients climb ladders, hoist pulleys, fit pipes and tote sand-weighted jugs up and down steps.
“It’s a way for (patients) to measure endurance and control symptoms, teaching people to stop what they’re doing when it’s painful,” said Severance. “But it’s also very reassuring for them to know that they’re actually performing jobs similar to what they’ll be doing when they return to work.”
Some companies bring in props, such as construction cones or boxes of computer paper, to make the drills as realistic as possible. In a separate room, a “work simulator” machine lets injured workers mimic motions such as driving a truck or raising a scaffold.
Joe Wicks, a United Parcel Service driver, lugged dollies loaded with heavy weights up and down stairs at the Donley Center’s work-hardening room last week. Wicks has been out of work all year because of a central-nervous-system disorder that has hampered his recovery from an ankle injury.
“It’s frustrating because it’s such a slow (rehabilitation) process,” said Wicks, who expects to return to work within a month. “But I’ve come a long way. Everything I’ll be doing when I return to work I will already have done here.”
The center sees more successes than failures. During the first half of this year, 63 percent of Donley Center patients were able to return to work, according to Kathleen A. Sohar, director of patient-care services at the center. Eighty-two percent of those people returned to their original employer.
But that means nearly 40 percent of patients won’t go back to work. “Sometimes a person’s physical capabilities and their job demands are never going to mesh,” Severance said. “It’s important to know when to quit trying.”
When that happens, the center offers what it calls “vocational rehabilitation.” A center counselor works with a patient’s employer to either modify his or her job duties or to find another job within the company. If that doesn’t work, counselors help patients find other work or training programs.
The Donley Center also acts as a neutral party in often-contentious workers’ compensation cases. Nearly one in five patients sent to the center is a referral from the state’s workers’ compensation court.
“We do serve as a neutral contact for all the parties in the system,” Severance said. (Employers) can’t come to us and say ‘we need this worker back now.’ But at the same time, we feel a great responsibility to get these people back to work.”
