Home Visits checking health status of public employees claiming sickness benefits in Italy

Last registered on April 28, 2021

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Home Visits checking health status of public employees claiming sickness benefits in Italy
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0007614
Initial registration date
April 27, 2021

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
April 28, 2021, 10:31 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Bocconi University

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Inps
PI Affiliation
Inps

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2017-11-22
End date
2018-01-05
Secondary IDs
J45
Abstract
The Italian social security administration (INPS) in 2017 was given the task to perform home visits (HV) on public sector employees claiming sickness benefits. Inps decided to replicate a setup similar to that already operating in the private sector. Thus, it was decided to begin by randomly selecting the certificates potentially subject to home visits in order to maximize the informational content of the data collected in the home visits.
The experiment took place in the 45 days between November 22, 2017 and January 5, 2018. It assigned the HV treatment through a “typical” stratified randomized experiment, following a five-step procedure. Visits were performed over 29 working days out of the 45 of the experiment period. The main steps, were as follows:

1. On each working day from November 22, 2017 until January 5, 2018, INPS drew daily, for each local office, a random sample of certificates from the universe of absence certificates (around 400,000 certificates).

2. Exempted certificates, i.e. those involving chronic or very serious disease, recent surgery, etc., were excluded.

3. Among the selected sample, a second random sample was drawn. Its size was determined in such a way that for each worker subject to HV there were an additional eleven workers in the control group. This sample, made up of about 60,000 certificates, was then used for the experiment.

4. Selected certificates were randomly ranked, and the resulting order defined the HV priority.

5. Visits were assigned to doctors optimizing travel time. During the period of the experiment INPS performed about 4,200 HVs, that is, about 145 visits per day.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Boeri, Tito, Edoardo Di Porto and Paolo Naticchioni. 2021. "Home Visits checking health status of public employees claiming sickness benefits in Italy." AEA RCT Registry. April 28. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.7614-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2017-11-22
Intervention End Date
2018-01-05

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The certificate on sickness leave is or is not consistent with the verified health status of workert
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Doctors were randomly sent home to employees claiming sickness benefits
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
randomization done in office by computer
Randomization Unit
Employee claiming sickness leave
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
180 Inps (Italian social security) local offices
Sample size: planned number of observations
60,000 certificates
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
180 offices 23 home visits
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Bocconi University Ethics Committee
IRB Approval Date
2020-11-11
IRB Approval Number
Details not available

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials