Group Practice in Occupational Medicine

Unions have been formed to improve economic standards of employees and occupational health, have subsequently pressed for family health services, and have achieved group medical practice coverage in many areas. In the process of industrialization in America, workmen’s compensation legislation was introduced as an employee benefit in a separate stream of development; thus, the current separation of health services into two systems-occupational and general medical care. This separation, while still justified today, can eventually be eliminated under a national health insurance scheme guaranteeing all health care as a right, including the care of workers injured on the job. This would leave to employers and employees, working in cooperation with technical experts, the task of improving working conditions so that job-related injury and illness may eventually be eliminated.