Benchmarks for staffing Occupational Health clinics are hard to find. 

Papers from the early 2000’s  suggest one physician full time provider for 5,000 employees with at least three full time occupational health nurses, one of whom can be a nurse practitioner ( or PA). But this was long before COVID and the requirements expanded drastically! I have references if anyone is interested, but did not include them since they are so dated. 

 If you are providing primary care also,  there should be one  additional provider for every 1,000 patients. This assumes a provider sees 20 patients, on average, every day. This comes out to over 4,200 visits per year and does not take into account email and heavy tracking and documentation requirements. 

This might be a good task for an ACOEM committee-figuring out what makes reasonable sense in terms of staffing in the current environment. When I tracked my volume in a prior hospital based occupational health clinic, my number of visits was five times that of the primary care providers, but the visits were generally less complex. 
 
If anyone has any evidence-based information on this issue, please share!
Sally Foster-Chang, DNP, ANP-BC,COHN-S

On Thu, Nov 9, 2023 at 2:51 PM Massaro, Marie T via MCOH-EH <mcoh-eh@mylist.net> wrote:

There may be information on the AAOHN or AOHP websites.

 

Sincerely,

Marie

 

From: MCOH-EH <mcoh-eh-bounces+marie.massaro=baycare.org@mylist.net> On Behalf Of David S. Cockrum via MCOH-EH
Sent: Wednesday, November 8, 2023 11:57 AM
To: MCOH-EH <mcoh-eh@mylist.net>
Cc: David S. Cockrum <David.S.Cockrum@hitchcock.org>
Subject: [MCOH-EH] MCOH Staffing Benchmarks

 

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Does anyone know of any benchmarks for staffing MCOH clinics? Our institution hired a consultant on staffing benchmarks, but obviously the consultant had no idea what an MCOH clinic does – they suggested two nurses for the entirety of our 13k employees! I reviewed the ACOEM MCOH guidance paper from 2019, saw nothing in there, and have not found much on internet searches. Curious if anyone staffs their clinics based on a benchmark, or just best assessment of workload?

 

Thanks,

 

David

 

David S. Cockrum, MD, MPH
He/Him/His

Medical Director & Section Chief

Occupational & Environmental Medicine
Department of Medicine

Tel (603) 653-3881 | Fax (603) 650-0930
Dartmouth-Health.org

 

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center 

    

 



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