Prevention pays off: why occupational health is worth the investment.

• Author: Held, Shari
• Position: Hospitals & Clinics

"It is better to put a fence at the top of a cliff than an ambulance at the bottom," says Mark Savage, director of Corporate Health Solutions for Methodist Hospitals in Gary and Merrillville. "Companies are so bottom-line driven, prevention can be a hard sell, but it is always a better solution."

The 2004 State Report Cards for Workers' Compensation, based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration data, gave Indiana an "A" rating for "excellent outcomes, especially in minimizing missed work." Even though frequency of claims has dropped in Indiana and nationwide for years, there is always room for improvement. And it begins with each individual company.

"Companies must have a corporate philosophy that prevention of injury is the No. 1 job, even before productivity," says Dr. James W. Butler, medical director for occupational health at St. Mary's Medical Center in Evansville. "That has to be No. 1. If they prevent injuries first, productivity will take care of itself."

Testing one, two, three.

Accident prevention can start before potential employees are hired or begin work. The process begins with having accurate job descriptions that meet Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements. Occupational-health providers often partner with human resource departments to revise current job descriptions and create new ones.

"It's really a great help for our staff to go on-site and walk through a company to see what they do and how they do it," says Annette Johnson, vice president of Business Health Services in Fort Wayne, which is part of Lutheran Health Network. "Then when we see candidates or employees for their pre-employment or post-offer physicals or for their injury care and they tell us what their job is, we know what that job entails physically."

An accurate job description detailing strenuous or hazardous duties is necessary for developing a test that matches the candidate to the job.

"A lot of companies would just routinely do a standard pre-employment physical, and candidates were generally healthy and cleared to do work," says Savage. "That doesn't show you anything about that person's ability to actually do the job."

Occupational health centers also provide post-offer physicals and return-to-work fitness testing. St. Mary's Medical Center in Evansville also performs Federal Aviation Administration flight physicals and has an extensive travel-medicine program to ensure that workers headed overseas have the proper medications...