Occupational Health

The Occupational Health Service serves all MIT students and employees, whether or not they are patients of MIT Health. It provides individual risk assessments, fitness-for-duty evaluations, medical surveillance exams, and evaluation and treatment of work injuries or exposures.

• Individual risk assessments: Workplace environments are designed to be reasonably safe for most people, but everyone is somewhat unique and some people may be at greater risk than others. We can provide a no-cost personalized evaluation to determine if the existing administrative and engineering safety controls in an individual’s workplace are reasonably sufficient given their personal medical status. If not, we will try to provide custom remedies for reducing individual risk, such as vaccination for hepatitis B or tetanus, voluntarily worn personal protective equipment, or education and training.
• Fitness-for-duty evaluations: Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, an employer has the right and responsibility to determine an employee’s medical capability to safely perform the essential duties of that individual’s job. These laws allow fitness evaluations to occur only under certain circumstances and only for the purpose of determining the individual’s fitness for their work. We do fitness evaluations for healthcare workers, people who work with nonhuman primates, nuclear reactor operators, and people who drive large vehicles or use cranes and hoists.
• Medical surveillance: Medical surveillance programs use validated methodologies, if available, to monitor the health of individuals whose work exposes them to unacceptably high levels of a potentially hazardous agent. The goal is to detect early signs of exposure or disease in individual workers, as well as to find trends in the worker population that can be addressed with improved preventative measures. OSHA has set standards for when an employer is required to provide medical surveillance to its employees at no cost or obligation for employees.
• Work-related injuries: Any member of the MIT community can receive treatment for work-related injuries at MIT Health’s Urgent Care Service. Injured workers should also come to Occupational Health for an administrative visit within a week of their injury or as soon as reasonable. Individuals are not required to receive medical treatment from Occupational Health at this visit, but can get treatment here if they so choose. We work closely with the MIT Environment Health and Safety Office, MIT Workers Compensation, and with many MIT supervisors, so we usually have a better understanding of an individual’s workplace than outside healthcare providers. Because of this, we can help ensure that workers compensation claims are processed, that EHS gets all necessary information, and that individuals are able to return to work in a safe manner.