As a safety professional, I’m sure you are well aware of the major issue that exists at many companies in terms of musculoskeletal injuries. Joe tweaked his back last month, Jenny twisted her knee last week, and now Dan has a sore shoulder today. For a safety professional, these injuries can be frustrating on multiple levels. Pressure mounts from upper management to reduce injury numbers and you strive to keep a healthy, happy, and safe workforce.
I am often asked, “Mike, what is the number one way we can stop these types of injuries from occurring?” My answer is on-site early injury prevention. This is performed by an allied health therapist for first aid aches or pains as defined by OSHA.
Now, I often hear from the safety professional that “We have a phone-in nurse service” or “we use an occupational health clinic down the street”. These are great services, but the truth of the matter is that they aren’t going to get to the core of the issues. A physical therapist, occupational therapist, or athletic trainer that goes onsite can identify the core issue of what is causing the ache or pain by using their medical knowledge of causation and ergonomics. They can then use OSHA approved first aid techniques to make sure the ache/pain doesn’t turn into a recordable injury.
I just spoke with a safety manager who implemented an OccuCare on-site early injury intervention program three months ago. At first the safety manager was skeptical about the program, but said he would give it a try because nothing seemed to be working and his employees kept getting injured. In my recent call to him he was ecstatic that they had just set a company record for days without an OSHA recordable injury. He also said that his employees were very happy to have this service on-site and saw it as an additional piece to their employee benefits package.
We here at OccuCare have yet to see a company who hasn’t seen a return on investment when implementing an on-site early intervention program. It is very common to have musculoskeletal recordables decrease by over 50% within months of implementation. Thus, significantly saving the company on workers’ compensation costs along with maintaining a satisfied and healthy workforce.
I would love to talk more about how we can help your company in eliminating workplace injuries. For a free injury analysis consultation please call me at 1-866-470-4440 or email me at msteinborn@occucare.net.