After leaving the hospital, John was told by his employer that he was required to report the next day to an occupational clinic. The truth was, he had injured his head, neck and back, in addition to his arm, but the arm was the most painful and most obvious injury. An ambulance took him to the hospital, where he complained primarily about his arm, which was broken in two places. Real-life examples include: Clinics Often Refuse to Treat the Entire Injury / All Injured Body Parts:Įxample: John slipped off scaffolding at work, fell 10 feet, and landed upside down. Many occupational clinics have worked with insurance companies to develop “policies” and “treatment protocols” designed to minimize care, testing, and lost time from work. The insurance company doesn’t like that, so your occupational clinic doctor may tell you they “aren’t allowed to take you out of work.” That just isn’t true and isn’t the law. Likewise, a patient may be badly injured, such that a quick return to work will prevent or slow down their recovery, but taking a patient out of work means that the employer must pay someone else to do that job, and the insurer has to pay the injured worker a weekly wage replacement benefit.

However, serious care and testing costs their real client – the Employer / Insurer – more money. In theory, their job is to provide care for an injured worker. Obviously, this creates a conflict of interest for these clinics. So, occupational clinics get sent more injured workers if they help the insurance company instead of you. If employers and their insurance companies don’t like the way a particular clinic handles cases, they stop sending patients, and that clinic goes out of business. To an industrial clinic, the real “client” – and the person paying – is your employer and its insurance company (the “Employer/Insurer”), not the patient. For profit, the clinics rely on employers to send patients.

“Occupational health clinics” receive most of their business from big employers and their work comp insurers. Why is it a Mistake to Visit an Industrial Health Clinic? In our opinion, these “repeat offenders” care primarily about making insurance companies happy, provide sub-standard care, and may seriously damage your workers’ compensation claim. This article will help you identify the healthcare groups which we counsel our clients to avoid. The allegiances and biases of any health group can be hard to determine ahead of time. For example, most WellStar Urgent Care centers are not occupational clinics, and often are unbiased. On the other hand, not every “urgent care” is an industrial or occupational clinic. This list is not exhaustive, so you should be wary of any medical group with “occupational medicine” or “occupational health” in its name. Caduceus Occupational Medicine and Caduceus USA) and

Concentra Medical Center, Concentra Occupational Health, In Georgia, numerous health clinics present themselves as experts or specialists in occupational medicine. Most workers’ compensation lawyers will tell you that one of the biggest mistakes an injured worker can make is agreeing to treat at an occupational health clinic.

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