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In 2011-12 Comcare elected to perform their own survey of injured workers - the Comcare Injured Worker Survey (IWS). Some questions from the Return to Work Monitor were used, and Comcare designed a further suite of questions to assist the jurisdiction understand their return to work issues. A different provider was used to interview Comcare claimants in 2011-12.

As a result of Comcare's new direction in terms of questions, only selected results are available within the 2011-12 Return to Work Monitor for Comcare.

The return to work rate is the percentage of cases where an injured worker has reported returning to work between the time of the claim and the time of the interview.

 In 2011-12 89% of injured Comcare workers had returned to work at some stage between lodging their claim and seven to nine months after submitting that claim. This is a 2% improvement over the last 12 months, partially reversing the downward trend since 2008-09.

In 2011-12 the Comcare durable RTW rate - the percentage of workers who had returned to work and were still working at the time of the survey - dropped by 1% to 80%.

 The durable RTW rate for Comcare has been trending downwards over the last seven years and is now about 10% lower than the high of 2005-06.

Comcare employees have typically returned to work significantly earlier than the Australian average. Over the last two years there has been a notable increase in the duration of time off work before a durable return to work occurs. Comcare employees with a durable return to work are off work almost twice as long as they were in 2009-10.

Click here for further information on the Comcare Injured Worker Survey