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Introduction:
The Long Island Occupational and Environmental Health Center (LIOEHC), is a publicly funded statewide network set up by the New York State Department of Health in 1986 to offer a mass of health and safety services to unions, Government and health professionals, workers and employees as well as their families to thereby promote health and wellness in the workplace. It provides wide-ranging services and consultancy at workplace levels to provide optimum health and reduce hazardous elements from the core areas of the work and education sites.
Workforce:
LIOEHC works under the guidance and expertise of Dr. Linda Cochiarella a certified internist, occupational medicine physician, medical author, acupuncturist and member of faculty of the Stony Brook University. She is assisted by a team of equally competent and significant physician assistants, industrial hygienists, counselors and nursing personnel trained and experienced to tackle all sorts of serious medical ailments and common workplace situations.
The assisting staff is well versed with occupational workplace hazards and is even able to work with the families of workers. They have been trained to offer comfort along with other services and the nursing staff has hands on experience in pulmonary and audiometric function tests. At best the staff is well aware of workplace ailments in most occupations be it office, construction site or others.
Services:
A healthy employee is the body and soul of any establishment. With this in mind the LIOEHC, at the employee and worker level, offers educational consultation services, occupational medical and clinical services to employees and workers and finally promotes workplace wellness to ensure happier healthier employees at all levels of any commercial establishment. It works in tandem with the OSHA, EPA, PESH and a few more similar establishments to understand MSDS sheets, identify and eradicate workplace hazards and present effective safety training to that effect. LIOEHC also assists employees and workers with compensation claims, insurance related issues and testifies if needed at Workers Compensation hearings.
Each injury and illness is provided with customized evaluation and independent medical assessments at affordable rates to ensure a speedy recovery and in turn increase employee and worker loyalty towards their employers. Their affiliation with OSHA enables them to identify prevalent occupational noise exposure, respiratory issues, benzene, cadmium, lead and asbestos exposure in addition to other significant hazards due to inefficient industry waste.
In schools and other public places the LIOEHC helps to detect diseases and other dangerous exposures through systematic site investigations. Some of their services at this level include assessment of indoor air circulation and significant changes in ventilation systems, training and counseling to eliminate possibilities of stress, trauma, as well as consideration and detection of Lyme diseases among workers and staff.
At last after preliminary investigations and sufficient medical attention has been provided to the affected; LIOEHC takes the responsibility of providing a stress free and healthy work environment. The basic understanding that employees and workers spend more waking hours at the workplace rather than their own homes has motivated the LIOEHC to offer a number of wellness programs to bring about a change in the attitude of people working in said establishments.
To help foster healthy lifestyles, certified wellness programs designed to benefit employees at the individual as well as the group level have been initiated by the LIOEHC. They provide training, implementation and estimation of all wellness services to understand and promote a healthier work experience. This in turn makes the employee and worker trust the management, leading to an overall loyalty towards the employer.
LIOEHC is an NIOSH chosen site for problems related to the World Trade Center and it works in partnership with NYCOSH to provide exemplary services and to highlight respiratory and skin disorders at the workplace and to bring about best patient handling within diverse industries.
Conclusion:
In short LIOEHC works to investigate workplace related health dangers, provide efficient and prompt medical attention and eliminate future similar ailments which in turn reduces employee absenteeism, unnecessary over use of health care benefits among workers, occupational injuries and promote productivity, lower health care costs and provide overall satisfaction to both workers and employers. The program also works with personal doctors of employees and workers and aids procedures in workplace compensations and legal testimonies if any.
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