Whether treating and rehabilitating an injury or educating on injury prevention, it can be difficult to simulate certain jobs in a traditional therapy setting. That’s where onsite services can provide a significant benefit, meeting employees at the job site to teach ergonomic and postural strategies customized to their individual work tasks and environment.
What types of services can be included in onsite work?
Types of services offered as part of onsite work include:
- Job analysis
- POET development and testing
- Risk assessments
- Early intervention
- ARC first response
- Causation job analysis
- Workstation assessments
- Ergonomic consultation
- Onsite work conditioning
- Exercise/stretching programs
- Return to work/Fit for duty assessments
- Education programs
Why ARC Physical Therapy+ offers onsite services
Therapists can more clearly evaluate workers’ tasks, test workers’ ability to perform tasks and provide a higher level of support for injury rehabilitation when onsite in the company environment. Sometimes in the clinic, there is no good way to simulate a specific job task, such as climbing poles for an injured lineman. If the employee lacks physical ability to perform the tasks, often onsite work conditioning is recommended.
“The employee benefits tremendously from performing specific job tasks with instruction from an onsite clinician,” said Kristy Robinson, ARC Physical Therapy+ Physical Therapist Assistant/Certified Ergonomics Assessment Specialist – Onsite. “It is also beneficial to get the employee back in the work environment. Clinics are usually a comfortable 70 degrees, and most people do not work in that environment.”
Onsite services are also the first line of defense in work injury prevention. Physical therapists analyze the job, help the employer hire people who can safely perform the job, identify risk factors of the job and help decrease or eliminate these risk factors. In doing so, ARC Physical Therapy+ can provide early intervention (such as stretching programs for warm-up and recovery) to help keep a concern from becoming a recordable injury, as well as provide all kinds of education to employers and employees.
“I got involved with onsite services back in the late 1980s when I wondered why I was seeing the same type of injury from the same employer and wanted to try to prevent this type of injury from reoccurring,” said ARC Physical Therapy+ Director of Onsite Services, Mary Peters, PT, MPH, CEA. Onsite services have continued to evolve from there.
How do onsite services benefit companies?
Onsite services help employers decrease injuries and let employees know the company is invested in their health and well-being. Happy and healthy workers are more productive, and onsite services ultimately help save employers money on workers’ compensation.
What kinds of companies are onsite physical therapy services good for?
Companies of all sizes and types of settings can benefit from onsite services. From laborers to office workers to public service workers, the list of who onsite services can be customized for is nearly endless.
What are people surprised to learn about onsite services?
People are often surprised by the unconventional environments a physical therapist will visit for onsite services, as well as the wide knowledge of various industries that therapists possess.
“I think people are surprised that we are not afraid to come out to their place of employment,” Robinson said. “We have been to some interesting places…waste water treatment facilities, pork processing facilities, sand and gravel (on a barge in the Missouri River), in operating rooms in hospitals, in a bucket with linemen, the list goes on and on.”
To see if our onsite services are right for your company, contact our Central Business Office at (913) 831-2721.
