Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Urgent Care Unscripted. My name is Barbara Alter. I am the Director of operations and business development for AFC Urgent Care in West Haven. And this is Mohammad Salon and the franchisee and owner of the is here. The game is great. And today we are here to, discuss workplace safety and occupational health services, something that impacts everyone. So it is no matter the size of industry or where you work.
You are in it and we are going to talk a little more detail about it. Yeah. This is a topic that I think goes under the radar for most people. And they don't think about, occupational health when it comes to an urgent care. But it's very important and it can definitely make a difference for your business and for yourself as an employee as well. And I'm Felix Pacheco, happy to be here, medical director for the AFC West saving urgent care. And we are very happy to have Felix here.
His, veteran, your physician at the, and he is the leader of our clinical team at West Haven. So now we go. Yeah, let's start with the topic. What is it that we can actually do for employers at an urgent care? Every employee wants to ensure the health and safety of their employees. So, if there, you know, injuries happen, then we're occasional falls. If you work with machinery, and, when these accidents happen, they need, usually you, is it safe for them to return to work?
Is there any significant injury to the individual? So in those cases, you need an evaluation, and we can provide that sort of medical evaluation. Yeah. And in what doctor said if what of the keyword in there is accident that can happen any time. And according responding to that keyword. Yes. Yes. Interest haven is open seven days a week. You can walk in any time. You can even consider and consult with us before you have to go to an emergency room.
And we can advise what the next step would be to. Yeah, absolutely. One other things that we also do at the urging care for a lot of the employers is a dot physicals. That's a big one. And we can also do employment physicals, drug screenings. So those are all boxes that we can check as your partner in this, you know, employer world.
There's also a key, level of access when you have an urgent care that you're working with directly because, you know, you're going to get your results on time, you know, that you can get your patients in and out as quickly as possible, since you are typically you're paying for that employer's time. So if you have a relationship with your local urgent care, I think it's it's a big, big help and a big, big difference for your, for your business for sure.
And those, again, to, to that keyword of when the accident happens. You want to be prepared for that. And as long as you have that relationship with the urgent care or the local, clinic, what comes with that relationship? If we can get some more information about the profile of your industry or the profile of your workforce, or the job descriptions up of your staff, then we can be better prepared to serve your needs when that accident happens and know about what kind of injury.
And, I'll be, in a more educated manner. Yeah. My initial response, I was focusing on the, current employee. Employee. But, she mentioned the good points from, like, the pre-employment process and how screenings are typically involved there. But then there's also continuous screenings for certain positions, like, you know, D.O.T. physicals and, you know, truck drivers and such.
You know, so we do all that if you think about, the things that are required for a lot of weeks and in general, pre-employment physical and, minor injuries, pretty much include that as well.
Yeah. I feel like, can you touch base on a little bit as from a provider's perspective, what that importance is in your eyes to have a relationship with an urgent care when it comes to getting your employment, you know, even getting back to work, like, as far as restrictions, I know that sometimes that's tough for for you guys as providers to determine whether or not you're going to send that patient back to work.
But can you can you tell us the difference between knowing the job descriptions and knowing what they can and cannot do, versus you just being blindly told this patient can't go back to work? Yeah. Like with any, functional assessment and trying to get an idea as to what they do as a baseline, how to determine whether or not they can return to that. A good example would be some of those like lifting heavy objects, or they have a back injury and they can't bend over that.
Obviously it's a limit to that. However, if they have, like a cut, a minor cut, that wouldn't necessarily prevent them from doing the heavy lifting. So yeah. That's a, a functional assessment, the location of the clinic, especially in relation to the facility and the employees homes, make it easy to get rechecked because oftentimes, make an assessment and the injury is such a time zero. In three days, we expect it to be better. But I mean, will it will not be as unclear.
And they sometimes need reevaluation. The convenience of rotation makes that more feasible. Yeah. I think what we're trying to say here is that, there is a smarter and more collaborative way of handling this kind of situation.
You would want to take a, think about it in a, like, an end to end solution when you have that relationship in advance, when we have the profile of your work and we know what kind of injury they might come in with, and we know that you want that staff to be back at work as soon as possible for the staff's benefit, your benefit. And we want to work with you to provide that solution in as perfect manner as possible.
And and that all requires that pre-work of establishing the relationship, sharing this information in advance, and not wait for the accident to occur with a clinic that's also geographically to, Felix's point is, close to you so that, it's the most efficient and time saving for everyone. And that's what it is, is instead of a statement comes with that proper planning and advance notification and so forth.
Yeah. I think one thing the employers a lot of times don't think about is that pre-employment physical. I think it's a great way to have a baseline of where you're starting with that employee because like we've mentioned here, accidents happen, right? But if you know that that employee had previously, a back injury, you might know at that point.
Okay. Well, if the patient if this employee has a back injury, then I know that I can't put him in a position where he's going to be, lifting heavy boxes. So we'll be able to kind of assess that for you and fit the right role for that person, too. So it's it's a great way. And I think it keeps your also your employees happy. If you're doing that yearly physical, you're less likely to have somebody getting sick all the time because you're trying to catch these things ahead of time, right? Felix?
Wouldn't you agree with that? Yeah. The preventative aspect, could play a, a small portion of it, but it could hopefully identify things early on and ideally prevent the kind of injuries that could occur at the workplace. Yeah. So I think it's also those like the the different kinds of injured injury. Plus there is a physical aspect of being injured.
And then there's the psychological or mental aspect of you know, some suffering also that, that, that will have to be addressed and properly solved for, I mean, mentally a person once one's affected physically, that mental effect can carry on for days and weeks and months. And, and that can affect the also. So how do we handle all of that and what we do to put together proper solutions. Yeah. Also a very certified psychiatrist. So that would be. He is joking.
So when employers make, I think health just part of their workforce in general, it definitely improves their workforce. It improves their employees health, makes them happier. We I mean, we have a business that we run between the three of us. We have obviously tons of staff that we work that we work with. And I think one of the big things that we do for our staff is keeping them happy mentally. And sometimes that includes making sure that they're being properly treated.
But it also ensures that they're getting their health checks, within the time frame that is needed. So thankfully, we are in urgent care so they can come to us any time. But, it's good to have that relationship as an employer. Yeah, I think it's one less worry. One less worry. Yeah. And if you're a business owner or manager listening to the podcast right now. So again, to build that relationship now is the best time versus waiting for the next accident to happen and impact your business.
So you want to be proactive about it and reach out and start working towards, you know, proactive solutions. Yeah. Oh, one thing I didn't mention that I wanted to touch based on is when you have a relationship with your urgent care, typically you can get lower pricing on all the work that or all the physicals and checkups that you are, or even a sick with a sick visit. If you don't want to go to a workman's comp, you can do, direct pricing with that location.
And that way it doesn't affect your workman's comp. So those are also things to think about as a business owner, building that relationship with your local urgent care, for sure. All right. We covered a lot about, workman's comp and occupational, health, the topic and how to handle this. And, in a planned manner. What are the benefits of benefits of, sharing information, with your closest and, best, for the benefit of you and your staff? You appreciate, listening to the podcast.
And thanks for this. And thanks for joining. Thank you. Or located at 354 Sawmill Road in West Haven, AMC right here, right now.