The claim came through standard channels: a 42-year-old senior executive at a professional services firm, on leave following a severe burnout episode. Physical clearance had been straightforward — no musculoskeletal injury, no chronic pain presentation. The cognitive picture was much less clear.
This is where most RTW cases like this stall.
The Challenge
Burnout-related cognitive impairment is among the most contested areas in disability management. The claimant reports significant difficulty with concentration, memory, and decision-making. There is no objective test that clearly establishes or refutes this — only neuropsychological assessment, which is expensive, conducted in a controlled environment, and produces a single data point rather than a trend.
The case manager faced a familiar situation: a claimant who appeared physically ready for work, whose role required sustained cognitive performance, but for whom there was no defensible basis for a confident RTW decision in either direction.
Integrating Neurofit
The disability management team worked with the treating occupational therapist to integrate Neurofit into the RTW planning process. The plan was straightforward: track four cognitive domains — processing speed, working memory, sustained attention, and executive function — over an 8-week period under real-world daily conditions.
The claimant completed 15–20 minute Neurofit sessions daily from home, targeting the cognitive domains most relevant to her professional role. Performance data synced automatically to the treating OT’s dashboard after each session.
Weekly check-ins between the OT and the case manager focused on reviewing the data trends — not just the claimant’s self-report of how she was feeling.
What the Data Showed
The longitudinal data told a clear story. In weeks one and two, performance across all four domains was below the normative baseline for the claimant’s age and education profile. Processing speed and sustained attention were the most significantly affected.
By week four, processing speed had improved measurably. By week six, sustained attention — as measured by performance consistency across longer task sequences — had normalized.
The trajectory across all four domains showed consistent, linear improvement throughout the monitoring period. This was not the pattern of a claimant gaming the system — gaming produces inconsistency. This was recovery.
The Decision
At week eight, the adjudicator reviewed the structured Neurofit progress report alongside the treating OT’s clinical assessment. The report documented 40+ sessions across 8 weeks, with domain-specific scores, trajectory charts, and session-level summaries.
The objective data supported what the OT had been observing clinically: this claimant had recovered the cognitive capacity required for her professional role. A phased return-to-work plan was approved.
“The Neurofit data gave us something we’ve never had before — a clear, objective picture of cognitive recovery over time. It made a difficult adjudication decision straightforward.”
— Disability Case Manager, National TPA
The Outcome
The claimant returned to full-time work approximately 3 months ahead of the typical timeline for a claim of this profile. The phased plan worked — she remained in the role through the first 90 days without recurrence.
For the disability management team, the outcome represented a meaningful reduction in claim duration and an adjudication decision that was fully supported by objective, longitudinal documentation — rather than self-report or clinical opinion alone.
Outcomes summary:
- 8 weeks to confident, defensible RTW decision
- ~40% reduction in claim duration vs. comparable cases
- 40+ sessions of objective, longitudinal cognitive data
- Zero adjudication disputes from the claimant or employer