Preventing Chronic Disability from Low Back Pain - Welfare.ie

APPENDIX GANALYSIS OF CLAIMS DURATION (PROJECT VS CONTROL)See analysis on page opposite. For this analysis, a cut-off of 4 weeks has beenused to compare claim durations for the project and control groups. The reasonfor this is that early intervention took effect only after 4 weeks. Thereforeprocessing of claims in the first 4 weeks would have been broadly the same asin 2002.The difference between the duration patterns for the project and controlgroups is statistically significant according to a chi-square test 1 . The fact thatthere is a reduction in longer duration cases is very significant as these casestend to become chronic and they could stay on benefit for many years.1 At the 95 per cent confidence interval30