Develop a useful fitness-for-work exam
A routine history and physical (H&P) may miss many important aspects that are desirable for a fitness-for-work exam. So how can you make sure the specific needs of a particular practitioner are assessed? Whoever is going to perform this exam should have the delineation of privileges form so they know what it is that a practitioner is doing in his or her practice, and then the exam can be customized appropriately, says Todd Sagin, MD, JD. If you are a radiologist, obviously your visual capacity is really important, but your ability to stand for 10 hours doing a vascular operation is not. If you have a minor tremor, it is going to be more important to assess that and the degree to which it can be remediated if you are someone who does procedures than if you are someone who does not do procedures. Just doing a routine physical is not a valuable approach to a fitness-for-work exam. You want a comprehensive exam that answers the appropriate questions for the credentials body or the requesting body, such as, “Can this person do safely what it is they do, or are there remediations or steps that have to be taken?”