OBJECTIVES: The American Productivity Audit (APA), an on-going week-to-week telephone survey, provides valid and reliable estimates of health-related work loss. The APA is currently being used to generate tailored reports for employers to inform them of the lost productive work time associated with specific health conditions. The paper illustrates the process. METHODS: We developed and validated the Work and Health Interview (WHI) for APA administration. The WHI quantifies missed work hours and lost productive time while at work for specific health conditions using two-week recall. Two measures were derived for each condition - hours/worker/week of lost productive time (LPT) and its dollar equivalent. Several derivation methods were considered. We selected a conservative method based on self-reported attribution for LPT. A random sample of 13,252 workers 18-65 years of age completed the WHI between 7/2/2001 and 1/02/2002. LPT was converted to dollars/worker/week using self-reported annual salary. Tailored employer-specific reports can be generated based on the characteristics of an employer's workforce including age, gender, occupation, and region. The illustration follows. RESULTS: Company Y (n=5,400) included 3,460 men and 1,940 women with similar age distributions: 45% 18-34 years, 30% 35 to 44 years, 20% 45 to 54 years, and 5% 55+ years. The five episodic/chronic-episodic health conditions associated with the most LPT in Company Y were cold/flu (8.2%), headache (5.9%), low energy (3.2%), back pain (3.1%), and digestive disorders (2.8%). LPT attributed to each condition among those affected was cold/flu (0.42), headache (0.22), back pain (0.21), low energy (0.14), and digestive disorders (0.12). These five conditions potentially cost the employer an estimated $5.1 million dollars/year in LPT. CONCLUSIONS: The APA can be used to generate tailored reports for employers of health-related work loss. This is a first step toward providing employers with concrete estimates of the indirect cost of specific health conditions.