With onsite Early Intervention physiotherapy, Employ Health experts can provide prompt management of any pain or symptoms, in turn facilitating return to work and health outcomes, and reducing the costly burden to both employer and employee.
Employ Health’s Early Intervention Program
By setting up unique ‘Health Hubs’ within partner businesses, Employ Health is able to adopt a hands-on approach to managing workplace injuries. We utilize evidence based therapies including soft tissue therapy, ART®, dry needling, joint mobilisation/manipulation and taping. We empower workers with proactive exercise and strengthening programs to actively engage them in the management of their own health.
Our highly skilled workplace physiotherapists understand the workplaces we partner with, which guides appropriate decision making regarding return to work planning via Early Intervention. This can include modified duty recommendations, task-specific assessment with workers, as well as facilitating dialogue between those involved in the workers’ rehabilitation, including managers, supervisors and medical professionals.
Benefits Of Early Intervention For Employees
Accessibility
Employees have accessible, confidential and cost-free access to prompt assessment, diagnosis and treatment of any musculoskeletal complaints which arise. This access is provided for conditions of any nature, irrespective of being considered ‘work’ or ‘non-work’ related
Early Intervention
Early Intervention for musculoskeletal discomfort or pain has been shown to reduce the risk of this pain becoming chronic. This allows for early resolution of symptoms for employees, enabling them to continue comfortably working and completing activities and hobbies outside of work
Support
Employees feel supported by their workplace when they are provided with access to a service which enhances their overall health status. The benefit for employees is task specific training and education on the job, as well as being considered experts themselves via participative risk management interventions.
Benefits Of Early Intervention For Your Business
Cost
The direct costs of an employee injury are often just the ‘tip of the iceberg’. The indirect costs, such as cost of replacing the injured worker, reduced productivity, reduced morale, opportunity cost of management time and stress on the employee can add significantly to the cost of an injury which is why onsite Early Intervention physiotherapy is simply a smart business decision.
Time
Combining clinically based (Early Intervention) and ‘task-based’ interventions has been shown to significantly reduce workers’ compensation rates, claim costs and the duration of absence time from injury for employers. These outcomes assist in reducing insurance premium costs for your business.
Reporting
Proactive reporting and screening for musculoskeletal symptoms via Early Intervention also allows for development of predictive models to help you move from reactive to proactive to predictive injury management and make informed safety and injury management business decisions.
Our Proactive Process For Early Intervention Physiotherapy
Step 1
The first step in establishing an onsite Early Intervention physiotherapy program is setting up a ‘Health Hub.’ This is a space within the workplace, where employees receive specific hands-on treatment, with access to equipment for tailored proactive exercise intervention. The Health Hub is a proactive space, which sets the precedence for active participation from an employee in their health improvement journey
Step 2
Site contacts are provided with suitable access to online booking systems to ensure engagement in the Early Intervention process. Access to dashboards for reporting purposes enables managers and supervisors with real-time updates, which is essential in effective workplace injury management and return to work facilitation.
Step 3
Reporting technology and data capture allows for accurate and meaningful reports to be developed by Employ Health, allowing your business to proactively manage and support injured workers. Timely reviews of the combined information from Early Intervention services and task-based interventions enables onsite planning for continued adaptation of a predictive model for onsite injury management
Why Employ Health?
Employ Health’s Early Intervention onsite physiotherapy services utilise the knowledge that musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) risk for a workplace arises from an interplay of factors arising from the work, the worker and the workplace. An Early Intervention program forms part of our multifaceted approach to proactive workplace health, and specifically targets risk at the level of the worker, with the positive health outcomes influencing workplace health culture and ensuring the worker is free of injury and capable to meet the demands of their work.
We bring a multifaceted program that actually aligns with the business values, the business vision and the business strategy, combining this with our expertise, tools and technology to make outstanding results achievable.
Frequently Asked Questions
At Employ Health, our Early Intervention programs are accessible for employees with musculoskeletal complaints and injuries of any nature. Whether the complaint or injury has resulted from a work related incident, non-work related incident, or has been progressive in nature either relating to work or non-work related factors, Employ Health physiotherapists are onsite and able to assist.
Physiotherapists and Occupational Therapists both assist in an individuals’ rehabilitation, however their involvement in this is quite different.
A physiotherapist focuses on treating an individuals’ injury, disease and disorder through a combination of manual therapy techniques, exercise and education, with a focus of restoring movement and function. In an occupational setting, physiotherapists are particularly focused on assisting with an individuals’ injury recovery to enable a pain free and functional return to normal work duties, and reducing further injury risk by increasing their overall physical capacity.
An Occupational Therapist focuses on promoting health and wellbeing by enabling people (typically after injury or illness) to participate in the everyday occupations of life, including work, leisure and self-care. Occupational therapists play a particularly crucial role in enabling people experiencing disability to identify and implement methods that support their participation in occupations.
From a time perspective, you should ideally see a physiotherapist in the acute stages of experiencing discomfort, ache/pain or sustaining an injury in a moment of time. The early treatment of these symptoms (within the first 1-7 days) has been shown to decrease the likelihood that an injury becomes severe or that pain symptoms progress to a larger and longer-term problem.
If your business has an onsite physiotherapy program, seeing a physiotherapist early is quite easy, and will assist in reducing your pain at work and the need to take time off work.