Utilizing Remote & Virtual Options to Care for Workplace Injuries

In 1876, while working with Alexander Graham Bell on an early-stage telephone, Thomas Watson spilled battery acid on his pants. Thinking on his feet, Bell used the phone to ask for help in what may have been the world’s first use of telemedicine for a workplace injury. Just three years later, a more concrete example of telemedicine emerged in The Lancet, which told the news of a boy diagnosed by his doctor over the phone. The prescient medical journal predicted the advent of “Remote Patient Care” almost a full century before the Internet was created. 

Today both telehealth and its extension telemedicine are common features of our modern healthcare system. While telehealth is more broadly defined and encompasses additional non-clinical services, telemedicine focuses on things like diagnosis and monitoring — making it a perfectly viable solution for remote assessment of workplace injuries. 

Goals and Benefits of Telemedicine for Workplace Injury Assessment 

To some extent, workers and employers have different priorities when it comes to handling accidents and mishaps at work. However, there are areas where their objectives overlap, such as speedy access to qualified help for the injured party! Here’s a brief overview of the main goals and benefits of telemedicine for workplace injury assessment: 

Telemedicine is fast and convenient, minimizing employee downtime

As noted by OrthoLive, employers should be concerned about “getting the employee back on the job as quickly as possible.” In most cases, the wounded worker is likely to want that, too, especially if their pay is affected by any downtime. 

Telemedicine comes to the rescue by enabling workers to get assessed potentially on the spot, without having to drive to an appointment. Indeed, in many cases, the injured person cannot drive themselves, thus the organization may need to have a second employee also miss work to drive them around. 

Telemedicine can be especially effective for assessing common repetitive motion and abrupt musculoskeletal injuries, which make up a major chunk of all incidents. From muscle, tendon, and ligament strains to carpal tunnel syndrome, employees in nearly every sector are exposed to such orthopedic injuries during the course of their daily work activities. 

Telemedicine may reduce OSHA-recordable incidents 

A second goal listed by OrthoLive is to ensure “the best care possible to each injured worker.” While it goes without saying that both employee and employer would want that, the organization has a pecuniary stake in the matter. Its’ goal is to treat injuries quickly and effectively “so that [injuries] are not OSHA-recordable, if at all possible.” 

Keep in mind, there’s a difference between OSHA recordable versus reportable incidents. If the injury is severe enough to be reportable, telemedicine assessment and care are not going to mitigate that requirement. However, if the injury can be treated on the spot, it may not meet OSHA’s general recording criteria. 

Telemedicine helps lower the risk of COVID spread

This one is fairly self-explanatory, but anything that reduces exposure to SARS-Cov-2 (the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease) is well worth trying. The last thing a worker wants is to get injured then show up at a clinic where they run into someone who has the coronavirus or other infectious germs. 

As noted by Massachusetts Hospital General, “frontline health care workers had a nearly 12-times higher risk of testing positive for COVID-19 compared with individuals in the general community.” This is not to say you should avoid in-person appointments if they are necessary, but these days it is wise to learn how to reduce risk when visiting a clinic or hospital.  

COVID clearly helped promote the use of telemedicine, as shown by NCCI data which revealed that “the share of active claims with at least one telemedicine service” increased from less than one-third of a percent to 14% by the second quarter. Much of that increase is due to the use of telemedicine for evaluation and management. 

Telemedicine may reduce insurance costs

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Private industry employers reported 2.8 million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses in 2019,” based on data pulled from the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses. That calculated to an incident rate of 2.8 cases per 100 full-time workers (out of total recordable cases). 888,220 of those nonfatal injuries and illnesses led to workers missing at least one day of work. 

But 2020 and beyond has seen a change, with insurers raking in fewer premiums but paying out fewer claims. Insurance Journal noted that due to COVID’s impact on the workplace in 2020, an “increasing number of workers were able to be treated via telemedicine, meaning they did not have to travel” and “injured workers…appear to have received their medical care without much delay.” 

How Does Telemedicine Work?

It’s plain to see the advantages of using telemedicine to assess workplace injuries, but how exactly does it work? 

For a standard live video appointment, the basics are generally the same, no matter who the provider is. A trained healthcare provider interacts with the affected employee remotely, usually via a secure, HIPPA-compliant online video teleconference platform. These platforms can be accessed through smart devices (smartphones or tablets) as well as laptops or desktops with Internet access, a camera, and a mic. 

Synchronous telemedicine appointments are similar to in-person visits, except the remote provider relies on video technology to perform physical assessments, and may ask more questions to determine the problem and determine care solutions. They might ask the patient to position the affected body part close to the camera (or move the camera closer to the injury). 

Skeptics should note that experienced providers are quite capable of accurate remote diagnosis, regardless of whether the appointment is in-person or virtual. To a large extent all providers base their assessments off what they’ve learned from prior related situations. In other words, signs, symptoms, and a bit of backstory about the cause of the injury can easily paint a clear picture of what the patient is suffering from. 

In some cases, a live video appointment isn’t always available or necessary. An asynchronous store-and-forward method is a secondary option that allows medical data to be collected then sent to a provider for later review and assessment. This may involve the capture of audiovisual data as well. Continuing care may involve using wearable remote patient monitoring devices or mobile health data tracking apps. 

Though it has been around in one form or another for over a century, telemedicine continues to evolve and adapt to meet the fast-paced needs of the ever-changing modern workplace. Savvy employers are leveraging this alternative healthcare solution to maximize all the benefits and cost savings it offers. Employees, too, are discovering the difference that telemedicine can make in their jobs so they can get the treatment they need with less stress and hassle.