Dataset Information

The Impact of Shift Work and Long Work Hours on Employers' Health Care Costs.

ABSTRACT: Objective: To estimate the additional health care costs incurred by two U.S. manufacturing companies due to their policies related to shift work and long work hours.

Methods: We applied risk ratios from the published literature to data on 2647 workers from Company A and 1346 workers from Company B to estimate the excess cases of several chronic conditions in the worker population due to shift work and long work hours. We estimated the annual health care costs incurred by the companies by applying Medicare cost data.

Results: Excess annual health care costs related to shift work totaled $1,394,365 and $300,297 for Companies A and B, respectively. Excess annual costs related to long work hours totaled $231,293 and $107,902 for Companies A and B, respectively.

Conclusions: Excess health care costs related to shift work and long work hours is substantial, but may not be large enough to compel companies to alter their work scheduling policies.

SUBMITTER: McHugh M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7720877 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The Impact of Shift Work and Long Work Hours on Employers' Health Care Costs.

McHugh Megan M French Dustin D DD Kwasny Mary M MM Maechling Claude R CR Holl Jane L JL

Journal of occupational and environmental medicine 20201201 12

<h4>Objective</h4>To estimate the additional health care costs incurred by two U.S. manufacturing companies due to their policies related to shift work and long work hours.<h4>Methods</h4>We applied risk ratios from the published literature to data on 2647 workers from Company A and 1346 workers from Company B to estimate the excess cases of several chronic conditions in the worker population due to shift work and long work hours. We estimated the annual health care costs incurred by the compani ...[more]

PMID: 32796261

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Project description:BackgroundPrevious reviews have demonstrated that shift work and long work hours are associated with increased risk for chronic conditions. However, these reviews did not comprehensively assessed the body of evidence, and some were not conducted in a systematic manner. A better understanding of the health consequences of shift work and long work hours will aid in creating policy and practice recommendations. This review revisits the epidemiologic evidence on the association of shift work and long work hours with chronic conditions with particular emphasis on assessing the quality of the evidence.Methods and findingsWe conducted a systematic review of systematic reviews with meta-analyses (SR-MA) that assessed the link between shift work or long work hours and chronic conditions (PROSPERO CRD42019122084). We evaluated the risk of bias of each SR-MA using AMSTAR v2 and assessed the overall evidence for each condition using the GRADE approach. We included 48 reviews covering cancers, cardiovascular diseases, metabolic syndrome and related conditions, pregnancy complications, depression, hypertension, and injuries. On average, only 7 of 16 AMSTAR items were fulfilled. Few SR-MAs had a registered protocol and nearly all failed to conduct a comprehensive search. We found moderate grade evidence linking shift work to breast cancer and long work hours to stroke. We found low grade evidence linking both shift work and long work hours with low to moderate increase in risk for some pregnancy complications and cardiovascular diseases. Low grade evidence also link long work hours and depression.ConclusionsModerate grade evidence suggest that shift work and long work hours increase the risk of breast cancer and stroke, but the evidence is unclear on other chronic conditions. There is a need for high-quality studies to address this gap. Stakeholders should be made aware of these increased risks, and additional screening and prevention should be considered, particularly for workers susceptible to breast cancer and stroke.

Dataset Information

The Impact of Shift Work and Long Work Hours on Employers' Health Care Costs.

Publications

The Impact of Shift Work and Long Work Hours on Employers' Health Care Costs.

Similar Datasets

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