In addition, we at OSU have also conducted federally-funded research on different aspects of the rehabilitation system including predictors of rehabilitation success, counselor satisfaction and performance, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. An interesting trend has emerged over the last few years. In the area of private-sector rehabilitation, counselors who can help individuals obtain work are valuable because they remove an outstanding portion of the liability that is covered by the insurance policy. The insurance industry has discovered that it is cheaper and better to help their beneficiaries return to work than it is to pay off a claim. This is especially true in workers' compensation cases where employers are clearly liable for wages lost by individuals who are injured on the job.
Nothing improves on the delivery of a service or the development of a product like competition.
The United States is a competitive society and policies that spur competition are healthy and good. During 1990, the Rehabilitation Division of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation returned to work over two thousand injured workers. Ohio is somewhat unique in that it offers industrial rehabilitation services directly to injured workers by a separate state agency. As you can see, this agency is quite similar to the public rehabilitation system. Over the last five years in Ohio, more and more of the delivery of industrial rehabilitation services have been provided by the private-sector.