3 Reasons to Consider Mobile Occupational Health Services

In today’s world – where you can get your daily vitamins or a late-night craving delivered right to your door via drone¹ – convenience is becoming more of an expectation versus a luxury, and this demand for efficiency and accessibility isn’t confined to what we do outside of work. More employees are now counting on their employers to bring both required and optional health services to the workplace – and there’s much to gain for all involved.² With a full suite of mobile and episodic offerings available to organizations of virtually any size, Concentra® is committed to helping your employees stay safe, healthy, and productive while cutting your costs and boosting regulatory compliance. If you’re still sending employees off site for tests and screenings, consider these three compelling reasons why it may be time to shift gears and bring a mobile health clinic to your place of business.

1. Mobile clinics provide a more convenient solution for occupational health services.

For many employers, convenience is the most straightforward benefit of having a mobile health partner. Not only will employees spend less time away from work by having tests, screenings, or vaccinations performed on site, but employers can also cut down on overtime pay, lost productivity, and other costs associated with sending employees to a remote location.³ Consider the scenario of a company-wide hiring event, suggests Mike Rhine, senior vice president and chief operating officer for Concentra Onsites. With Concentra’s mobile health services, pre-hire employment physicals and screenings can be completed for all intended offers right then and there, allowing the employer to bring on hundreds of new employees that same day – a process that could otherwise take weeks. For organizations that require audiometric screenings, up to 20 audiograms can be conducted each hour in a fully equipped mobile unit – something which, again, would consume a considerable amount of time and resources if employees were tested elsewhere.⁴

2. Bringing a mobile occupational health care provider to your workplace can help you remain compliant.

For industries regulated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and other agencies, compliance is critical for the health of the employees and the organization’s bottom line. In particular, respiratory protection has long been monitored and regulated. In fact, a combination of the 1918 flu pandemic and the nation’s focus on the mining industry led to the first certification of a respirator, the Gibbs breathing apparatus, in 1920.⁵

Even with 100 years of standardization and regulation, respiratory protection violations led to over 2200 OSHA citations in 2021 – the second most common type of violation that year – taking over $4.5 billion dollars out of employers’ pockets. ^6,7 Nearly one-quarter of the violations were against Standard 29 CFR 1910.134(e)(1), which requires employees to obtain written medical evaluations prior to a respirator fit test.⁸ By partnering with a mobile clinic whose providers are specifically trained in occupational health care and OSHA regulations, employers can ensure their required tests and screenings are completed not only conveniently but also properly, avoiding costly citations and other consequences. Concentra’s respirator protection services include the required written medical evaluation immediately prior to testing, which is performed by a certified technician, guaranteeing compliance with the OSHA respiratory protection standards that are most often responsible for non-compliance.

Respirator fit testing is just one mobile service that can boost your organization’s compliance ratings; read about additional required tests and screenings that can be completed on site here.

3. Offering on-site health events can keep your workforce healthier overall. 

There’s no question about the value of having required tests and screenings performed at your workplace, but offering optional services with on-site, episodic events* has a number of health benefits for your employees as individuals and your workforce as a whole. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) encourages organizations to consider offering certain immunizations to employees and their families at workplace vaccination events, citing improved morale, enhanced trust, and protection from illness as just a few of the potential benefits of an employee vaccination program.⁹

Vaccinating employees and their families against the flu has a particularly compelling set of advantages, including helping to avoid a flu outbreak in the workplace and reducing the lost time and other costs – up to $10 billion worth – associated with employee flu illness.¹⁰ Employers have routinely struggled to achieve adequate vaccination rates among their workforce, however – a problem which may be solved by making flu shots more convenient and accessible through an on-site health event.¹¹ According to a study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM), up to 90 percent of participating employees received flu shots at a company-sponsored event, with 80 percent of those employees naming convenience as the primary reason for getting their flu vaccine.¹² With flu season just around the corner, as well as the continued spread of the Monkeypox outbreak, keeping employees healthy and optimizing vaccination efforts with episodic workplace health events can help to ease the burden – at least somewhat – on the already-overloaded health care system.¹³

Give mobile health services the green light

More than ever, employers must make every effort to keep pace with industry trends and societal shifts, including the swift rise of convenience, compliance, and a commitment to health and safety on workplace priority lists everywhere. By bringing occupational health services straight to your location, you can achieve measurable improvement in all three areas. Get started with mobile health care for your employees by calling Concentra to speak with one of our knowledgeable representatives today.

* An episodic vaccination event does not typically require a full mobile unit. On-site vaccination events are typically set up in a customer’s place of business and staffed by Concentra colleagues.

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NOTES

1. “Walgreens and Wing launch drone delivery in first major U.S. metropolitan area,” by Sarah Cason. Walgreens Stories. April 12, 2022.
2. “What Employees Really Want at Work,” by Alan Kohll. Forbes. July 10, 2018.
3. Promoting Vaccination in the Workplace. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Last reviewed October 25, 2021.
4. Bringing Care to the Employer’s Doorstep: How the Pandemic Changed the Game for Mobile and On-site Health Care. Concentra. Published by Risk & Insurance. May 2, 2022.
5. 100 Years of Respiratory Protection. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Last reviewed July 31, 2019.
6. Top 10 Most Frequently Cited Standards for Fiscal Year 2021. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
7. “OSHA’S TOP 10 SAFETY VIOLATIONS: WHAT THEY COST IN 2021,” by James Langford. MSC Industrial Direct.
8. “Top five respiratory protection violations from 2021,” by Ryan Shaffer. Worksite Medical. February 3, 2022.
9. Workplace Vaccination Program. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Updated November 4, 2021.
10. “The Economic Effect of Influenza on Businesses,” by Patricia Curran, RN. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). December 13, 2012.
11. “HR’s recurring headache: Persuading employees to get a flu shot,” by Caroline Hroncich and Sharif Paget. Benefit News. October 31, 2018.
12. Cori L. Ofstead, et al. Effectiveness of Worksite Interventions to Increase Influenza Vaccination Rates Among Employees and Families. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.  
     February 2013; 55(2): 156-163.
13. Samka Shukla, et al. Optimizing vaccine distribution via mobile clinics: a case study on COVID-19 vaccine distribution to long-term care facilities. Vaccine. 2022;40(5):734–741. December 27, 2021.