Posted September 10, 2024 in Occupational Health
How an Occupational Healthcare Program Can Help Workers Manage Stress
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As competition for workers increases, so does the suite of perks employers are offering to attract new talent and retain the employees they have. Employers are looking for innovative ways to support their workers’ health and well-being, both when they’re at work and when they’re at home. From donating to charities for every day an employee works in the office to guided yoga breaks, keeping workers engaged and supported has become a major focus for businesses.
If you’re considering a change to your workplace health and wellness offerings, an onsite clinic can help you provide a holistic benefit to your employees while reducing your costs. Here are four ways an onsite clinic can support you in ensuring the overall health and well-being of your employees.
Many workplace injuries, such as cuts, burns and sprains, don’t require extensive emergency care. However, if your workers don’t have somewhere they can go onsite to get their injuries evaluated by a qualified medical professional, you’re often legally safer sending them to an urgent care facility or emergency room to avoid incorrectly classifying their injuries.
Wrongly diagnosing an injury as non-serious could open your business up to major penalties and costly litigation, but sending an employee for unnecessary offsite care could lead to skyrocketing medical costs for needless treatment and workers’ compensation claims.
By offering an onsite clinic to your workers, you’ll get peace of mind knowing that your injured employees have access to a medical professional who can assess their injuries and recommend appropriate treatment. When the worker’s injuries are minor enough that they can be handled with basic first aid, your worker benefits by receiving prompt care and being able to return to work quickly. And in those cases where offsite care is necessary, the team at your onsite clinic can point the worker to in-network care appropriate for their injuries.
Workers face a whole host of barriers when trying to access routine medical care, including long wait times, confusing insurance requirements and difficulty scheduling appointments around other obligations. Maintaining a regular cadence of wellness visits and appointments for chronic conditions helps your employees stay on top of their health, making them less likely to need sick days and keeping them more productive while they’re at work.
When your employees can’t access routine healthcare, they may face diseases that could have been treated with earlier screening. This not only impacts their health, but it decreases their capacity at work and makes them more likely to get injured on the job — something that increases your costs.
Convenient care at an onsite clinic removes virtually all barriers to healthcare access for your employees. They can schedule annual check-ups or cholesterol screenings during their lunch hour or immediately after work, making it to their appointment without having to fight traffic or arrange time off. An onsite clinic also allows your employees to get to know their care providers, making them more likely to seek treatment for complaints that may seem small but could be a sign of bigger issues.
True out-of-the ordinary workplace accidents do happen, but accidents and injuries as the result of a routine hazard also are common. If, for example, employees don’t consistently wear eye protection on the job, you are more likely to see eye injuries.
These routine hazards and lax safety practices can be difficult to pinpoint, meaning they are posing a frequent threat to your workers unless they’re remedied. Unless you see a rash of injuries and accidents related to a specific hazard in a short time period, you may not even realize there’s an issue that needs to be corrected.
An onsite clinic that utilizes sophisticated data tracking can help you identify these hazards and poor practices—and recognize these trends across multiple worksites. When the onsite providers see your workers for injuries that happen in a similar manner, even if they’re spread out over a period of months or years, the data the clinic has collected can help you pinpoint the source of the injuries and work to remedy it. You get the benefit of being able to make your workplace safer for everyone, decreasing your instances of injuries and saving you on healthcare-related costs.
Balancing the demands of work and home life, such as family obligations, hobbies and financial concerns, can be difficult for many workers. They may struggle to find time to partake in habits that can improve their health and wellbeing, such as exercising, taking breaks or eating nourishing foods.
Not regularly caring for themselves can lead employees to becoming ill or more susceptible to workplace injuries. When an employee isn’t feeling their best, or they’re worried about something at home, it can decrease their effectiveness and productivity while at work.
With an onsite clinic, you can provide easily accessible wellness programs and services to encourage your employees to take care of themselves. Mental wellness advocacy appointments, healthy eating challenges and all-hands stretch breaks led by your onsite care team can be the encouragement your employees may need to take charge of their wellbeing, jumpstarting their journey to health. And when your employees are healthy and feel they have a good work-life balance, they’re more likely to be productive and continue working for you for longer.
At Medcor, we pride ourselves on finding the right fit for every client’s onsite clinic needs. We work to help you identify the best mixture of services to keep your employees healthy, happy and productive and to reduce your instances of injuries and decrease your costs. To get started on setting up your own onsite clinic, speak with a Medcor advocate today.