How SMBs Can Provide Employees with Quality Injury Care
Discover how Small & Medium-Sized Businesses can overcome roadblocks to deliver quality, affordable occupational health care with a flexible virtual solution.
September 4, 2025
For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), protecting the health and safety of your workforce is essential, but it’s not always easy. If you are a safety leader in a small or medium-sized business, you’re likely balancing operational demands with limited resources. You want to offer a quality occupational health program, but a lack of tools, knowledge, and options that match available resources creates roadblocks to setting up a solution your employees deserve.
Fortunately, there are effective and affordable solutions that don’t require building an in-house clinic or navigating a patchwork of local providers. In this blog, we will look at why you need occupational health solutions, common roadblocks small and medium-sized businesses face, and a virtual care solution that enables quality injury care for your team.
Key Reasons Why SMBs Need an Occupational Health Solution
#1-Improperly handling work-related injuries can have a major financial and operational impact.
According to the National Safety Council (NSC), the total cost of work injuries in 2023 was $176.5 billion, which includes wage and productivity losses of $53.1 billion, medical expenses of $36.8 billion, and administrative expenses of $59.5 billion.
When you break this down to individual injuries, the impact on SMBs becomes instantly clear. For comparison, let’s consider the average impacts of shoulder, leg, and arm injuries.
Shoulder Injury:
Days Away from Work (DAFW): 30
Workers’ Compensation Cost: $51,750
Leg Injury:
Days Away from Work (DAFW): 16
Workers’ Compensation Cost: $59,994
Arm Injury:
Days Away from Work (DAFW): 13
Workers’ Compensation Cost: $51,750
#2-A quality occupational health solution helps build a solid foundation to grow
The health and safety of employees is critical for business success. Developing an effective occupational health program protects your business and employees by providing a solid foundation for your business to grow. But even more critically, it helps create a culture of trust where employees know that their health and safety are a top priority.
Common Challenges SMBs Face in Managing Work-Related Injuries
CAREonsite has spent over 40 years supporting small and medium-sized businesses, and we’ve identified three key barriers that consistently hinder the development of strong, effective occupational health programs.
Operational Roadblocks
A business has decided to manage work-related injuries at an outside clinic or urgent care facility that doesn’t specialize in occupational health care.
A company was unable to find a reliable local solution and pieced a solution together by themselves and/or a patchwork of vendors.
Knowledge Roadblocks
A non-medical professional (safety professional or supervisor) takes part in critical medical decisions on whether an injury requires further attention or care.
A business decides to use an occupational health program built for a larger organization, resulting in an overbuilt program with a vendor that doesn’t understand its needs.
Cost and Perception Roadblocks
A company thinks that the cost of setting up an effective program is prohibitive at their current size, and it will be something they have to grow into.
A business thinks that setting up an effective occupational health program is extremely complicated and time-consuming, and beyond their current ability to properly integrate with their team.
The Negative Effects
These roadblocks create barriers to a successful occupational health program and often result in overtreatment of injuries, failure to follow best-practice occupational health guidelines, increased worker comp costs, unnecessary recordable injuries, wasted time, higher budgets, poor injury outcomes, improper care, and create an impression among employees that they are not cared for or supported.
How TeleNurse Triage (TNT) Makes Injury Care Easier
Virtual occupational health services, like TeleNurse Triage (TNT), are helping SMBs solve these challenges in a smarter, more scalable way.
With just a phone call, injured workers can be connected to an experienced occupational nurse who:
Triages injuries in real-time using evidence-based protocols
Provides guidance on whether the injury qualifies for first aid or requires further medical attention
Helps to reduce unnecessary ER visits and minimize OSHA recordables
Delivers appropriate care while lowering workers’ comp exposure
This immediate access to care improves outcomes and ensures employees get the right treatment at the right time, without overburdening your team or your budget.
Why SMBs Choose CAREonsite TeleNurse Triage
CAREonsite’s TeleNurse Triage (TNT) service is built with the realities of small and medium businesses in mind. Our turnkey solution helps you streamline injury response, improve care quality, and reduce unnecessary costs.
Here’s how we make it easy:
A dedicated toll-free number gives your employees 24/7/365 access to an occupational health nurse.
Evidence-based protocols ensure injuries are managed consistently and appropriately.
Peer-to-peer case management with external providers ensures continuity of care if a referral is needed.
We address both standard and musculoskeletal injuries with specially trained RNs and Musculoskeletal Injury Specialists (MIS).
And the results speak for themselves:
81% of injuries are managed as first aid or self-care, avoiding unnecessary treatment.
Clients see a 35–50% reduction in workers’ comp costs.
Our approach leads to better clinical outcomes, lower risk, and a healthier, safer workforce.
Contact CAREonsite to learn how your business can overcome the roadblocks and set up effective injury care for your employees.
FIND US AT
