Many employers engage in employee screening prior to employment and occupational health testing for existing employees. These procedures vary by industry, but commonly include drug testing, employee physicals, employee flu shots, vaccinations, tb tests, or employee functional capacity exams.
Some workers regard employment screening and occupational health testing as tedious process and potentially offensive. Some see these processes as protecting the company and/or jeopardizing an employee’s job.
However, another perspective is that occupational health screening not only allows a company to maintain an efficient workplace but also to proactively manage the health and safety of their employees.
Let’s take a look at standard occupational screening practices and consider how these practices protect the employee:
Background Checks
Employers typically run online background checks on new potential employees. Background checks look for a wide variety of historical events in a person’s life. However, they usually check a person’s criminal record on multiple levels, as well as whether the person is on a terrorist watch list or a sex offender registry. Further, background checks can verify professional and educational facts about an applicant.
How can background checks protect an employee/workplace?
- First, a company won’t hire employees who are more likely to be a danger to other employees.
- Second, background checks can also ensure that incoming employees are qualified for their new roles. As a result, other employees’ valuable time won’t be consumed with doing the work of the new employee in addition to their own.
How can Mobile Health help?
Mobile Health offers comprehensive background check solutions that we customize according to a company’s specifications. We partner with Sterling Infosystems to provide fast and accurate reports and we offer a variety of background check packages.
All corporate accounts with Mobile Health grant access to a HIPAA compliant online client portal. There, an administrator can schedule exams (including background checks, drug tests, physicals) and view results of exams.
Drug Testing
Occupational drug testing screens current and prospective employees for abuse of specified drugs. Drug testing requirements vary starkly across industries. Drug testing can test for many substances, but at minimum usually tests for THC, Opiates, PCP, Cocaine, and amphetamines.
Benefits of an employee drug testing program include lower turnover rates, reduced absenteeism, and increased productivity.
How can drug testing protect an employee/workplace?
- Drug testing has the potential to eliminate situations where an employee is a danger to him or herself and to others. Further, drug testing can reduce the number and severity of dangerous workplace accidents, providing a safer atmosphere for all employees. This becomes particularly important in more industrial workplaces.
- Drug testing can also provide a company an opportunity to help an employee find treatment for a drug program. The perception that a company only drug tests so that they can fire employees is a mistaken one. From a coldly logical point of view, replacing an employee is a highly expensive and risky proposition. From a warmer point of view, many companies genuinely care about the well-being of their employees. Consequently, they may foster an employee’s recovery from a drug problem, including formulating a treatment and a return to work policy.
A company can only look after the welfare of an employee struggling with drug abuse if they drug test and discover the drug abuse in the first place.
How can Mobile Health help?
Mobile Health offers a wide range of customizable drug testing options. We can perform pre-employment drug testing, annual drug testing, random drug testing, post-incident drug testing, and reasonable suspicion drug testing.
Mobile Health can perform drug tests using urine, blood, or hair samples. We can also conduct the test either at one of our 7 NYC & Long Island locations, or on-site at the workplace.
Mobile Health is able to test for a variety of drug panels, from the standard 5 panel drug test to other drug panels.
To ensure compliance, Mobile Health uses SAMHSA certified laboratories for testing and a Medical Review Officer (MRO) for confirmations of positive results.
Employee Physicals, Functional Capacity Exams, & Other Medical Procedures
Companies can utilize a wide range of employee screening options to evaluate an employee’s health and their ‘fit for work’ status.
Common health screening exams include:
- Physical Exams
- TB Tests
- Respirator Fit Tests
- DOT Physical Exams
- DOT Drug Testing
- Vaccinations
- Titers
- Functional Capacity Exams
How can they protect an employee/workplace?
- Employee physicals can measure the overall health of an employee. This might be more useful to the employee than the employer, as an employee is less likely to get a yearly health checkup on their own. Further, vaccinations and titers can ensure that employees are protected against dangerous diseases in the workplace.
- Functional capacity evaluations simulate the physical tasks that an employee will face at work and gauge whether the employee possesses the stamina and physical demands to either start in a specific job or to continue in their job. Certainly, as employees age or their health changes, they may not be able to perform as physically strenuous tasks as they were in the past. A functional capacity exam can gauge the status of an employee’s physical ability, and has the obvious benefit of preventing a potentially serious injury to an employee. Thus, if a functional capacity evaluation is failed, the employer can ideally put the employee in a different position or reduce the physical requirements of a job.
Roughly 11% of Mobile Health’s functional capacity evaluations result in failure – results which can prevent an employee from continuing in a potentially dangerous job capacity.
How can Mobile Health help?
Mobile Health works with individuals businesses to design a physical exam package to meet unique safety and regulatory requirements.
Our medical experts are specifically trained to understand and perform these procedures in accordance to New York State and Federal regulations as well as your unique business needs. To companies who require pre-employment physicals, our compliance assurance software helps keep your workforce safer, healthier, and compliant.
Employee Flu Shots
Each year research is conducted to find which strains of influenza are most likely to occur in the coming flu season. From these indications, a flu vaccine is developed. Although flu shots aren’t always that effective at preventing against a year’s flu strain, they remain the best chance of avoiding the flu.
How can they protect an employee/workplace?
- Flu shots can protect employees from each other. Simply, a vaccinated workforce won’t get each other sick with the flu!
- Typically a person suffering from the flu will either miss or not be productive for 3-6 days. This costs a company in the short and the long run.
How can Mobile Health help?
Mobile Health offers a wide range of customizable corporate flu programs, including on-site flu shots (we’ll come to you) or fast flu shot appointments in one of our 6 NYC & Long Island locations.
Mobile Health offers:
- On-site Clinics
- Express Appointments
- Online scheduling and reporting.
- Weekend & evening availability
On-site Services
- Available in your office or place of business.
- Flexible hours around your schedule.
- Dedicated nurse with mobile clinical kit.
