One of the largest economic concerns for Corporate America is Employee Health Management. It is true that America is seeing a lot of streamlining secondary to advancements in technology but the fact remains that Human labor is still gigantic and probably isn't going away soon. We see that jobs are lost to some extent in the tech sector but it is also clear that Amazon, Walmart and UPS, for obvious examples, require enormous numbers of Human capital.

With Human workers comes along illness and injury. The resultant loss of productivity alone costs American business about $250B per year or close to $2,000.00 per worker. The cost of associated medical care could easily double this figure. A total loss then of $500B per year to American productivity is enormously serious and consequential as is the individual cost to each coporation. The current legal trend across the nation is to insure employee coverage for care and to protect the employee from any type of employer retaliation for being sick or injured.

It behooves employers then to skillfully navigate this issue. Employers have to avoid being too strict with employee health and injury issues as risking legal attacks makes no sense. Moreover, it is also counter-productive to have sick employees working as their productivity is decreased by at least half even if they do force themselves to show up to work. And not to be discounted is the issue that sick employees can spread contagious disease to other employees thereby multiplying the original problem many times over.

My research shows that the most logical approach to the problem is for employers to strongly consider teaming up with a Corporate Medical Officer for want of an official term at the moment. An arrangement where a medical consulting firm can immediately review medical issues of illness and injury in any type of field of medicine could not only help the stricken employee but save the company huge dollars in lost time and medical expenses. Such a medical firm can review the employee's medical records and reports to see if they're genuine, proper and correct. Companies should never, ever assume that a doctor's report must be right. Physicians often miss things and regularly make errors. Some sort of over sight will catch these errors and prevent unnecessary medical expenditures. This also helps the employee with quality of care.

We've also found that relying on contracts with Orthopaedic or other types of Medical Practice firms do not help the company or the employee. All that is happening with such firms, given that they are in the practice of medicine, is that they give you a slightly reduced price for their services. Then all they have to do is add a service here and there and your cost is right back where it would have been anyhow. These firms are not medical-legal firms and have little to no experience in medical-legal review practice and only know one small area of medicine. Their profit is in billing for medical procedures just the same as any other provider. You simply cannot expect them to cut their own income by finding ingenious ways to lift the corporate bottom line. It isn't going to happen.

We suggest that employers look to associate with bona fide, experienced, medical-legal consulting firms who are seasoned in such matters, who aren't profiting from the very activity that needs reduction and who have a wide range of available medical experts in any field. We believe that a medical consulting firm that is committed solely to medical review work can properly help both the employer and the sick employee by being an objective, medically disinterested, third party consultant who will work to prevent medical fraud & abuse, help employees get proper medical care so that they can return to work and help employers save a small fortune in cash and productivity.