Occupational Rehabilitation Services
We provide effective and result focused occupational rehabilitation services’ ensuring your business gets the required outcomes needed to return your injured employees to work faster and safely.
Our Occupational Rehabilitation services include:
- Worksite visits
- Functional capacity evaluations
- Return to work plans - developing and monitoring
- Rehabilitation Coordination
- Case Management
- Injury Rehabilitation programs
We provide professional advice on how to:
- Decrease no. of lost time injuries and sick days
- Ensure safe and effective return to work program
- Ensure employees return to their normal duties earlier
- Increase staff morale
Worksite Visits
A Worksite Visit (sometimes referred to as a Workplace Evaluation) is a specialised on-site assessment of an employee's pre-injury duties and/or potential suitable duties.
The benefits of a thorough worksite visit is not only in the variety of resolutions to problems identified to be contributing, causing or aggravating workplace injuries; but it also allows our consultants to identify preventative options, such as risk assessments, ergonomic advice, and manual handling training, to ensure future injuries are minimised.
A worksite visit is also a useful tool for upgrading an employee's medical certificates or sourcing appropriate suitable duties. The aim of a worksite visit is to identify any problem work areas that may pose a risk of injury to the employees or even to design a Return to Work Plan for an injured employee that matches their current functional tolerances.
Functional Capacity Evaluation (FCE)
A Functional Capacity Evaluation (FCE) is a comprehensive assessment of a person's current physical and functional tolerance for work activities.
Our FCEs aim to:
- assess a person's physical and functional ability to perform work activities
- predict a person's potential ability to perform work after returning from injury or a rehabilitation program
Our consultants use standardised and non-standardised assessment tools to formally evaluate an employee's abilities and limitations against identified work related criteria. We use the “WorkHab FCE system” to ensure continuity across all of our assessments. By using this system we can also provide you the employer with a detailed report upon completion of the assessment.
Our Functional Capacity Evaluations provide evidence based results from where return to work goals can be established and assist in the success of the rehabilitation program and return to work plan.
Return to Work Plan
A Return to Work Plan (also referred to as Suitable Duties Plan) is an evidence based intervention incorporating work activities and activities of daily living (ADL) to ensure a successful return work is achieved for an injured employee. A return to work program may include alternative duties, and/or a graduated return to work. The most effective return to work program usually involves activities the injured employee would normally perform in their workplace.
The return to work plan aims to achieve an increase in the injured employee's activity level and speed up a return to work by improving the injured employee's functional tolerances and performance.
The return to work plan is always designed in full consultation with the injured employee, their treating medical practitioner, their employer and insurer. The plan also takes into consideration any results from a Functional Capacity Evaluation and Work Site Visit. We ensure all our plans are realistic and achievable, ensuring that injured employee returns to work in a safe and timely manner. Ideally, the plan should be signed by both the employer and the worker.
Our main objective is to ensure that everything possible is implemented to enable the injured employee to return to their normal duties as soon as practicably possible and also to minimise the physical, psychological, social, vocational and economic consequences of a work-related injury.
Rehabilitation Coordination
Our consultants are QComp qualified “Rehabilitation and Return to Work Coordinators” (previously referred to as “Rehabilitation Coordinator”) who are able to liaise with WorkCover Qld or Self Insurer, injured employees and treating medical practitioners to develop the most effective ‘return to work’ and ‘rehabilitation’ plan, thus ensuring a faster return to normal duties.
Our role as the “Rehabilitation and Return to Work Coordinator” includes:
- early communication with workers following an injury to assess the rehabilitation need and to notify relevant parties
- coordinating the worker’s return to work
- developing the suitable duties plan in consultation with the worker and their employer
- ensuring the suitable duties plan is consistent with the current medical certificate or report
- liaising with all parties including the insurer
- indicating as early as possible if there is a need for the insurer to assist or intervene.
Case Management
Our Company is a registered Rehabilitation Provider with Comcare providing case management services under The Safety Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (SRC Act). This Act provides for the rehabilitation of Commonwealth employees following a work related injury.
Our role as Rehabilitation Case Manager is critical in achieving a reduction in the impact of injury in the workplace. All our consultants have attended Comcare Case Management training and have the necessary skills, experience and influence to achieve effective return to work outcomes for your business.
Our consultants follow strict guidelines developed by Comcare in consultation with agencies to ensure we provide the most effective case management service.
Our role as a Rehabilitation Case Manager is the focal point within your business for the achievement in the reduction of injuries in the workplace.
The functions of a case manager are covered under two areas:
- Operational - Providing assistance to individual injured employees: and
- Strategic - Managing broader issues of return to work in the organisation
We as Rehabilitation Case Managers not only coordinate the various inputs to the Return To Work process; but we also effectively manage it. We successfully manage workplace relationships and our competencies reflect your business’ operational, strategic and management skills.
Our Consultants provide the following services when working as a Rehabilitation Case Manager:
- Arrange and coordinate rehabilitation and return to work strategies
- Assist with the development and implementation of the business’ rehabilitation system
- Manage effective workplace relationships
- Manage personal work priorities and professional development
Injury Rehabilitation Programs
Our injury rehabilitation programs prepare people physically and functionally to enable them to return to work, assist them in commencing a physically demanding job or to successfully gain vocational employment.
We provide professional one-on-one assistance with:
- improving functional tolerances
- increasing fitness levels
- injury rehabilitation
- prevention of re-injury
- developing self-management rehabilitation
We also prescribe exercise programs for people struggling in their current job and requiring improvement in functional tolerances to complete their daily work tasks. These programs can be run as a group or 1 on 1 privately.