Injury Center Provides Services to Help Get Your Employees Back on the Job.

Work injuries can cost any company money and any employee a full livelihood. The therapists and staff at The Injury Center at OCI work hard to promote health, wellness and productivity in your workplace.

Post job-offer screening

Once an employer makes a conditional offer of employment to an individual, we can assist with post job-offer screening. Together, the employer and occupational therapist will develop a skills test to assess a worker’s ability to accomplish tasks directly related and essential to the job offered. The Occupational Medicine Group will administer the screening and will document the individual’s baseline level of maximum capacity. Recommendations for possible work accommodations are addressed when appropriate.

The Injury Center at OCI is also pleased to offer post-offer testing with the WorkSTEPS system. This further helps employers match the physical demands of a new employee with the physical demands of the job.

Job-site analysis

The Injury Center at OCI can evaluate both your company’s work environment and the way workers interact with it to determine causation of an injury.

With our job-site analysis, we identify the essential functions required to do each job, evaluate reasonable accommodations and create a written report that includes job descriptions that will make it easier to attract qualified candidates and match them to the jobs they are best suited to do. Our analysis helps the business be more successful in hiring and retaining qualified employees.

Our ergonomic consultations include video analyses to assess ergonomic risk factors such as repetitive motion, awkward postures, equipment vibration or heavy lifting that can result in work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Our professionals use evaluation tools recognized by NIOSH.

If ergonomic risk factors are present, we may recommend modifying the work area or providing instruction to workers on techniques to modify their work practices to reduce the chance for injuries. If required, we offer customized presentations to companies and their employees, explaining how proper movement and positioning can prevent injuries and lost time.

You might need job-site analysis if:

  • you need documented critical job demands.
  • you have a work area of high risk and are looking to reduce the risk.
  • you are not sure if the job is repetitive.
  • you need to match an employee to a job.
  • you need to accommodate a job for an employee.
  • you need documented critical job demands.

Work Hardening

For situations in which injured workers need to build up their strength, endurance, range of motion and flexibility before returning to the job, Midwest Rehab at OCI [[link to Midwest Rehab page]] offers individualized work hardening and work conditioning programs.

Work hardening involves real or simulated work activities, such as using construction tools, climbing scaffolding, handling materials on a loading dock, working a factory line or operating heavy equipment. It is highly structured and goal-oriented, with patients reporting to our clinic’s simulated work environments five days a week for up to six hours per day.

Tasks address the issues of safety, physical tolerance and work behaviors and are graded so that workers progressively improve their physical capabilities. We can also create modified conditioning programs for individuals who are able to concurrently work light duty.

Throughout the work hardening or conditioning period, the patient and therapist work as a team in conjunction with the physician, employer, insurance carrier, nurse case manager and other professionals. Our therapists strive to maintain open lines of communication and continuity of care so that together we can get workers back on the job as quickly and as safely as possible.

Functional Capacity Evaluations

The Occupational Medicine Group provides functional capacity evaluations to analyze a worker’s physical capabilities and develop solutions to restore function. Functional capacity evaluations address the following issues:

  • Is there a physical match between the worker’s functional capabilities and the physical demands of the job?
  • Is the worker exhibiting safe body mechanics and safe movement patterns?
  • Is the worker performing with a consistent, legitimate effort concerning functional abilities?
  • Is pain limiting the worker’s performance?

We can evaluate a worker’s specific job description and/or determine “levels” of work an individual can perform. Our goal is to clearly understand the worker’s present physical abilities including:

  • range of motion
  • muscle strength
  • endurance
  • flexibility
  • cardiovascular fitness
  • material-handling capacities

Prevention and Wellness Programs

Because knowing how to prevent accidents is vitally important to companies as well as to employees, The Injury Center at OCI is available to present educational programs at workplaces or at our office. The programs are tailored to a company’s or workers’ needs and focus on:

  • body mechanics
  • anatomy overview
  • lifting techniques
  • fitness
  • education
  • nutrition
  • well being
  • cholesterol screening
  • blood pressure testing
  • glucose testing
  • body fat

Preventative and wellness programs are highly recommended for workers in high-risk industries. Public educational lectures also are available.

For more information on any of our services, or to schedule a job-site analysis, please call 217-547-9108.