Industrial Rehabilitation

The UM Health-Sparrow Industrial Rehabilitation program provides rehabilitation and preventive services to clients in various work settings. Our program is designed to assist injured workers safely back to work and to provide objective information about a client’s physical and functional capabilities.

Ergonomics and Job-site Analysis

Our therapists are trained to identify ways to make the work environment safer and more productive. After an analysis of the work, worker and work site, they provide employers with guidelines for safety and give recommendations on new work area designs and adaptive equipment for maximum work area efficiency, work flow, body posturing and body mechanics. Our staff also assists employers with writing functional job descriptions in accordance with ADA guidelines.

Functional Capacity Evaluations (FCEs)

In these evaluations, a work-related test assesses the individual’s physical ability in 29 different areas. It clearly and objectively describes the tasks a worker is able to perform in a normal workday. The five major areas that the Iserhagen Work System evaluates are:

• Dynamic strength
• Ambulation
• Flexibility/positional tolerance
• Static work
• Coordination

Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy

Direct access to physical therapy and occupational therapy allows injured workers to receive high quality care by the same streamlined team. The team establishes treatment objectives that are realistic and consistent with workers’ needs and promotes optimal levels of physical independence and functional abilities.

Pre-Employment/Post Offer Screening

This helps assure an accurate match between the worker and the work. It provides specific correlations between job demands and an applicant’s physical abilities in accordance with ADA guidelines. This program is able to assist employers in developing valid post-offer assessment tools.

Work Hardening

This is an individually tailored program designed to simulate various job duties to maximize injured workers’ physical tolerance in order to meet physical demands for safe return to work and competitive employment. It teaches and reinforces safe and proper body mechanics. This program is available at the Health Science Pavilion in East Lansing or at the employee's work site.

Educational Services

Industrial Rehabilitation educational services were developed to provide training specific to the workers, the work environment and the type of work preformed. All programs are created to meet Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards and are available onsite.

Programs include, but are not limited to:

• Strategies to reduce and prevent the risk of injury
• Job coaching to evaluate workers’ performance of essential job tasks, ensuring safety and proper body mechanics
• Back, neck and shoulder injury prevention
• Repetitive strain injuries and cumulative trauma disorders prevention
• Body mechanics and lifting
• Pushing and pulling ergonomics for industry and office settings
• Exercises for preventing injury