Nearly every company has dollars that it spends on “required” occupational health services. We discussed this in the first post on the WHS Healthy Worker Pyramid SM. Reactive care is one form of required healthcare with a high cost and small impact. In many companies, health assessments are similarly inefficient. Companies require employees to do a mandatory pre-employment physical at the time of hire. This is used to “check the box” that they completed the assessment. They also require employees to complete respirator fit testing, audiometry testing, or other similar OSHA mandates. However, each year they “check the box” to confirm testing. Therefore, these healthcare dollars are spent every year, and the only value received is a form that gets filed away in a cabinet somewhere. However, there are benefits in turning obligation into value.
Injury Trends, Biometrics and Screening
The pre-employment physical and mandatory occupational health screenings can be incredibly powerful tools. They can enable employers to learn incredible details about their workplace health conditions. When combined with workforce-wide biometric assessments, employers can glean invaluable data on their employee’s health. Employers can also develop informed, intelligent conclusions about their workplace health exposures and deficits, turning obligation into value. This can only happen if a skilled vendor, such as Work Health Solutions, utilizes these powerful tools. Once the assessments are complete, you can look for trend data and opportunities for interventions.
Turning Obligation into Value
When our Work Health Solutions team completes workforce health assessments, we do more than “check the box.” Assessments do not need to be pass/fail. You can use them to:
- identify early opportunities for interventions
- highlight workforce trends that require attention
- trigger proactive workplace interventions that can save employers money
- prevent recordable illnesses and injuries
- reduce overall healthcare costs
Added Value Occupational Health
Turning obligation into value allows you to make the most of a required process. Required assessments can add value in other ways, too. You are spending money to conduct a pre-employment physical with a prospective hire. Why not get the most bang for the buck? If the employee is working in a role that has a risk of lifting injuries, address that proactively. Incorporate a quick ‘safe lifting’ tutorial into the physical, delivered by a healthcare professional with specialized training. Perhaps the employee is to be working at a desk for 40+ hours per week, including a quick ‘desk ergonomics’ tutorial. Additionally, find the risks in your workplace, and mitigate them with a preventative approach. Take the time that your employees are spending with a healthcare provider, and get more value out of each encounter!
Our team of professionals started in positions just like yours. We were clients who needed better occupational healthcare services. So, we look at every service from your perspective and then identify ways to add value to each service. Contact us today, and find out more about how we can make your occupational healthcare dollars work for you.
