Sometimes, employers have their own emergency care services provided on site. Whether or not that’s good care is a completely different story.
According to a Dec. 2 report, Amazon’s on-site emergency care actually endangers the workers that it should be protecting. Why? The care team doesn’t always follow company protocol.
Take, for example, a case that happened in New Jersey. An on-site medical unit saw an employee after an object fell and struck their head. The emergency medical technicians on staff were told that the worker had blurred vision and a headache, but the staff didn’t call a physician or send the worker to a doctor’s office or hospital.
This was just one of six similar instances, and the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) did issue a warning letter for them. In these cases, OSHA found that Amcare medical staff members had decided to treat patients in-house instead of referring them out to hospitals or doctors, even though they potentially violated the laws of the state as well as federal law by doing so. OSHA also inspected the clinics and found that there were EMTs and athletic trainers who were working outside their scope of practice without the correct supervision. In New Jersey, a physician must supervise ATs and EMTs while they work; ATs and EMTs cannot work independently.
This is an example of a time when workers’ lives could be put at risk because of negligence. If you’re hurt at work, you deserve the opportunity to see a medical professional and to receive the appropriate care for your injuries.
