Occupational Medicine

For urgent care operators who offer occupational medicine services, the value of those services is self-evident. Likewise, businesses that already count themselves as occ med clients are likely to recognize the benefits for their employees and their own operations. So, where’s the disconnect for those businesses who “don’t need” an occ med provider? The answer may be that they simply don’t get it, if an article posted recently by Personnel Today is any indication. “Many …

Occupational medicine can be found in more than half of U.S. workplaces, according to newly published data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. If data from the Urgent Care Association are any indication, many of the workers and employers who benefit can thank an urgent care operator for that; nearly 73% of respondents who took part in the UCA’s 2018 Benchmarking Report say they …

As marijuana use becomes legal in more communities across the country and urgent care providers (among others) get the message that opioid prescriptions have been far too prevalent, the nature of positive drug tests in the U.S. workforce seems to be changing with the times. Based on more than 10 million workplace drug test results in 2018, Quest Diagnostics reports growth in positive results for marijuana, while positive results for most opiates were down vs …

As we told you in January, new data from the National Safety Council (NSC) revealed that the odds of dying from an unintentional opioid overdose are now greater than those of being killed in a motor vehicle accident. Drug poisoning is the leading cause of unintentional death overall in the U.S. The implications of this go beyond the obvious for clinicians who are called upon to treat patients who present with acute pain related to …

The U.S. Department of Transportation added four semisynthetic opioids to its drug testing panel on the first of this year. Now, just over 10 months later, those four—hydrocodone, hydromorphone, oxycodone, and oxymorphone—are turning up more often than their older counterparts when transportation professionals fail a drug test. New data from the Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index show that the positivity rate for them is “notably higher” than the positive rate seen for more traditional opiates. Prior to …

With publication of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) new Qualification of Drivers; Diabetes Standard, drivers who have insulin-treated diabetes will no longer be barred from operating commercial motor vehicles (CMVs). Here’s what you need to really need to know if you offer occupational medicine services such as Department of Transportation physicals in your urgent care center: Certified Medical Examiners will rely on  physician input to determine whether to issue a Medical Examiner’s Certificate …

The popularity of workplace medical practices has waxed and waned for ages, but with major employers like Amazon and Apple building actual on-site medical facilities for their workers, the “company doctor” may be entering a new golden age. According to a new report from Mercer, one-third of U.S. businesses with 5,000 or more employees and company-sponsored plans now have a general medical clinic on site. The idea is to lower medical costs and encourage optimal …

The opiate crisis and legalization of marijuana in some states has upped the ante for occupational medicine providers charged with conducting drug screens for workers and prospective employees. Patients who may be concerned about their own ability to pass a urine test don’t make it easy sometimes. Some have been known to try to substitute “clean” samples for their own questionable bodily fluids when they know they’re going to be tested. One woman in Denver, …