Similar proportions of participants with GI or dermal symptoms visited a doctor, but dermal episodes were associated with the lowest proportion of people reporting time off work or hospitalization.
The data set included information on claimant occupation, claimant demographics (age and gender), nature of reported injury, body part reported affected, time off taken by claimants, and cost of claims.
Overall, 9.3% of those with AGI reported taking time off work.
Of those in employment, 39.7 % reported having time off work due to their current episode of back and leg pain, either self-certified or with formal sickness certification.
The majority of claims were relatively minor in nature, with 12.3% of claimants reporting no time off from work and 69.2% taking less than a month off work.
Older women were less likely to report taking time off work as a barrier (⩾50 years, 13%; <50 years, 40%; P=0.001; MWTrend).
67.5 % reported pain below the knee, 60.7 % were in paid employment with 39.7 % reporting time off work.
In the community group, 93.5% reported taking no time off work (due to their arthritis) compared with 85.8% of those in the hospital group in the 12-month follow-up period, the mean values equated to 3.26 days and 3.71 days, respectively.
Self-reported time off work (in binary form (yes/no)) will be a secondary outcome.
Secondary evaluation will also look at self-reported time off work and medical record review based sick certification periods over 12 months follow-up.
On-the-go high speed connections could shave days off the reporting times and save lives.
