Medical Surveillance & Medical Screening

Adventist Health and Rideout Occupational Health Center can provide OSHA mandated Medical Surveillance.

Medical surveillance and Medical screening are two fundamental strategies for optimizing employee health. We encourage the employer to contact the local OSHA office to find out how to meet all the screening and surveillance requirements for the company and also find out all the standards that apply to them in particular.

At Adventist Health and Rideout Occupational Health Center, we can customize our testing to meet individual needs. Medical surveillance is used to test for exposure to substances such as lead or asbestos; and we also provide testing for hearing loss and respirator fitness.

Medical screening is, in essence, only one component of a comprehensive medical surveillance program. The main reason for screening is early diagnosis and treatment of the individual. Medical screening is a method for detecting disease or body dysfunction before an individual would normally seek medical care. Screening tests are usually administered to individuals without current symptoms, but who may be at high risk for certain adverse health outcomes. The purpose of surveillance is to detect and eliminate the underlying causes such as hazards or exposures of any discovered trend thus focusing on prevention. However OSHA “medical surveillance” requirements are generally clinically focused (e.g., medical and work histories, physical assessment, biological testing) with information obtained from the clinical processes used in the monitoring and analysis elements of medical surveillance. Medical surveillance is the analysis of health information to look for problems that may be occurring in the workplace that require targeted prevention. Surveillance serves as a feedback loop to the employer. Surveillance may be based on a single case or sentinel event, but more typically is used as a screening tool to be used for a group of employees being evaluated for abnormal trends in health status. Surveillance can also be conducted on a single employee over time.