Occupational Health Services

Book excerpt: Workers and their families, employers, and society as a whole benefit when providers deliver the best quality of care to injured workers and when they know how to provide effective services for both prevention and fitness for duty and understand why, instead of just following regulations. Designed for professionals who deliver, manage, and hold oversight responsibility for occupational health in an organization or in the community, Occupational Health Services guides the busy practitioner and clinic manager in setting up, running, and improving healthcare services for the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and occupational management of work-related health issues. The text covers: an overview of occupational health care in the US and Canada: how it is organized, who pays for what, how it is regulated, and how workers' compensation works how occupational health services are managed in practice, whether within a company, as a global network, in a hospital or medical group practice, as a free-standing clinic, or following other models management of core services, including recordkeeping, marketing, service delivery options, staff recruitment and evaluation, and program evaluation depth and detail on specific services, including clinical service delivery for injured workers, periodic health surveillance, impairment assessment, fitness for duty, alcohol and drug testing, employee assistance, mental health, health promotion, emergency management, global health management, and medico-legal services. This highly focused and relevant combined handbook and textbook is aimed at improving the provision of care and health protection for workers and will be of use to both managers and health practitioners from a range of backgrounds, including but not limited to medicine, nursing, health services administration, and physical therapy.