More than 27,000 USC employees may lose on-campus access to occupational medical services, according to a USC Staff Assembly document.
The Engemann Student Health Center called for its own removal from USC’s employee Medical Provider Network to better accommodate students during a staff assembly meeting on July 1.
Dr. Sarah Van Orman proposed to provide better treatment closer to campus for our employees when they are injured.
Lupe Del Rio, director of Workers Compensation and Disability services at USC, spoke on behalf of Engemann at the meeting. She said Engemann is not able to meet the needs of injured and sick employees.
“[Engemann is] not an occupational medical facility,” Del Rio said in an interview with Annenberg Media. “Many times when employees become injured they need to follow up and would have to go out to the occupational centers.
This new plan was proposed to ease some of the burdens on the health center.
“[Faculty and staff] are going to an appointment-based service for students,” Del Rio said. “So when our faculty show up it disrupts that service.”
Engemann’s current occupational healthcare costs exceed the value of insurance reimbursements. This requires the clinic to charge a student health fee that subsidizes occupational care to account for this disparity. One assembly member questioned the motive of reducing costs for shifting occupational care away from Engemann.
Del Rio said other clinics are better suited to offer occupational treatment to USC employees, according to the document.
“One issue that came up [in the meeting] was that we are giving less quality care,” she said. “I don’t believe that to be true. We have over 600 work injuries recorded a year. It is very rare that we receive ‘I did not like this’ the services they received.”
Del Rio said there are several local facilities around campus for employees if they can no longer receive treatment on campus. For example, Proactive will send an Uber to pick up the injured employee and take them to a Proactive location, provide treatment and then bring them back, according to Del Rio.
“We also have several facilities locally so it can vary, travel time from 15 minutes to 30 minutes,” she said. “We have some emergency hospitals. So we have different clinics that are within our medical provider network.”
Engemann has not yet set a date for the implementation of its removal from the employee Medical Provider Network, Del Rio said at the meeting.
The plan is still on hold to be reviewed by leadership, she said.
“It’s a process that at the time seemed to be approved because we went through the different channels,” Del Rio said.
Correction made at 12:07 a.m. on Oct. 3: A previous version of the story and its headline said student workers could lose access to occupational medical service. Student workers would not be affected by changes because all USC students taking six credit or more are required to pay the Student Health Fee for USC Student Health Services. The change would only affect full-time and part-time USC employees.