Occupational Medicine

Keep your workers healthy and productive with occupational medicine services from Essentia Health. 

What's an Occupational Medicine Doctor?

An occupational medicine doctor has specialized training in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of work-related injuries.

Team-Based Care

Depending on your location and needs, your occupational medicine team may include:

• Occupational medicine doctors
• Physical therapists – Measure and improve your ability to move
• Occupational therapists – Measure and improve your skills to do work tasks
• Nurse practitioners and physician assistants - Provide care, guidance, and testing related to work wellness and injuries

Keeping Your Employees Healthy

Partner with us to make the most of your company’s most valuable resources—your employees. Count on us to help you:

• Understand regulatory compliance issues
• Coordinate medical care from the doctor’s office to the workplace
• Decrease workers compensation costs
• Get sick or injured employees back to work as quickly and safely as possible
• Put the right employees in the right jobs

Employee Wellness Services

Our occupational medicine team can help you keep your workforce in good shape with:

• Ergonomic assessments and recommendations
• On-site health screenings, exercise education, and flu vaccination
• Training in proper movement and posture

Functional Job Analysis

Identify and evaluate a job’s physical requirements. With help from a worker who performs the job, a physical or occupational therapist measures required movements, forces, actions, and postures. Use the results to:

• Make ergonomic changes and training programs that help prevent injuries
• Create job descriptions and prework hiring screenings

Industrial Consultation Services

Measure the levels of pollutants, noise, and other workplace hazards that could cause illness or injury. Use the information to take steps that protect your employees.

Employee Exams

We offer the following exams to evaluate workers’ health and abilities:

• Chemical exposure testing – Measures the level of certain toxins in or on an employee’s body
• Department of Transportation exams (DOT physicals) – Show the ability to safely drive a commercial vehicle
• Executive physicals – Check physical and mental health with an extensive series of tests
• Functional capacity and fitness for duty evaluation – Assesses how well an employee can do work activities, especially after an injury or illness
• Prework hiring screening (preemployment physical) – Shows if your job candidates can safely do required tasks
• Respirator clearance and fit testing – Shows the ability to use a respirator and find the right fit
• Return-to-work screening – Reveals when or whether an employee can go back to a certain job after an injury or illness
• Tuberculosis skin tests
• Vision, hearing, and lung function tests

Employee Injury Management

While keeping your employees injury free is your top priority, sometimes things happen.  Our services provide guidance and assistance for work-related injuries to help your employees safely return to work.

Return-to-Work Plan

Let us help you create a company-wide plan for reintegrating injured employees back into the workplace. We will come on-site, review your needs, and help you develop a plan tailored to your organization.

Work-Hardening Program

We offer a work-hardening program to assist your employees in safely getting back to work after an injury. In the program, employees practice their job duties with therapists who teach them how to do them safely. We can also recommend a step-up plan to gradually returns employees to full-time work.

Walk-in Services

In Fargo, North Dakota, and Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, send your employees to select walk-in clinics for timely job-related health care. Our providers also offer limited occupational medicine services including:

• Employee injury management
• DOT exams