Introduction

Did you know that Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) are the leading cause of pain, suffering and disability in the American workplace today?

It’s true. And it’s unfortunate because MSDs are preventable.

The truly unfortunate part about it is that a simple change in philosophy would empower organizations to prevent nearly ALL MSDs.

Your employees wouldn’t have to suffer through the painful experience of an injury that can have long lasting effects on their health and ability to provide an income for their families.

Your organization wouldn’t have to suffer high worker’s compensation / medical costs, lower productivity, lower product quality and a damaged safety culture.

This game-changing philosophy is what we are going to unpack with you over the course of this Musculoskeletal Health tutorial. It’s an accumulation of over 25 years of hands-on experience preventing MSDs for clients. (The average Ergonomics Plus client reduces MSD-related worker’s compensation costs by 78% within four years of service implementation.)

We hope you find the lessons helpful and get a ton of value out of the workshop. Your role as a safety leader going through this tutorial is to learn how to empower your organization to prevent MSDs in a consistent and predictable way. Our job is to equip you with the tools and training you need to make a major impact on your organization through a successful MSD prevention process.

Ready to get started?

It all begins with a clear understanding of what MSDs are and what they are not.

Understanding Musculoskeletal Disorders

Understanding MSDs and knowing what causes them provides a clear path to establishing an MSD prevention process that has a chance to succeed.

A musculoskeletal disorder is simply an injury or disorder to the human body’s musculoskeletal (or “movement”) system.

The musculoskeletal system is made up of tendons, ligaments, nerves, soft tissue, etc. and is designed to enable your body to move. You can think of an MSD as a “movement system disorder”.

What happens is that over the course of time, micro-trauma to the soft tissues begins to outrun the body’s recovery system. This creates a muscle imbalance that, over the course of time, develops into an MSD.

Common MSDs include:

• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
• Tendonitis
• Muscle / Tendon strain
• Ligament Sprain
• Tension Neck Syndrome
• Thoracic Outlet Compression
• Rotator Cuff Tendonitis
• Epicondylitis
• Radial Tunnel Syndrome
• Digital Neuritis
• Trigger Finger / Thumb
• DeQuervain’s Syndrome
• Mechanical Back Syndrome
• Degenerative Disc Disease
• Ruptured / Herniated Disc,
• and many more.

What an MSD is NOT

We need to set the record straight on this one. The language you use to describe MSDs is important and often indicative of how successful you will be in preventing them.

A “musculoskeletal disorder” is not a “repetitive motion injury” or an “ergonomic injury” or any other term.

There is no “repetitive motion” part of the human body. There is no “ergonomics” in the human body. A musculoskeletal disorder is a musculoskeletal disorder. It’s an injury/disorder to the human body’s musculoskeletal system.

Using “repetitive motion” or “ergonomic” or any other term besides musculoskeletal disorder to describe these injuries is an attempt to designate a singular cause to the injury. This will always hinder your MSD prevention efforts because there is no singular cause of MSDs.

One of the biggest MSD prevention mistakes you can make is to designate a singular cause of MSDs. If you fall into this trap, prepare to be constantly baffled that MSDs keep plaguing your workforce.

Think about it. If you believe repetitive motion is the singular cause of MSDs, then you will reduce repetitive motion in your workplace.

That should be good enough to prevent MSDs, right? After all, it’s only a “repetitive motion” injury, right?

Wrong.

You missed awkward postures. You missed excessive force. You missed body mechanics and work practices. You missed work readiness. And you missed all the other causes of MSDs.

Do you see how the language around MSDs can impact the way you approach preventing them? Understanding MSDs and knowing what causes them provides a clear path to establishing an MSD prevention process that has a chance to succeed.

MSDs are injuries and disorders to the body’s musculoskeletal or movement system, and can be thought of as “Movement System Disorders”. An MSD is an MSD, and NOT a “repetitive motion” or “ergonomic” injury. The language you use is important because there is no singular cause of MSDs.

The Causes of Musculoskeletal Disorders

The work environment is a complex set of systems and the human body is a complex set of systems. MSDs happen at the intersection of these systems, and so it won’t surprise you that there are many causative risk factors that can lead to the formation of MSDs.

The work environment is a complex set of systems and the human body is a complex set of systems. MSDs happen at the intersection these systems, and so it won’t surprise you that there are many causative risk factors that can lead to the formation of MSDs.

The only way to prevent something is to know what caused it, understand what caused it and then systematically eliminate those causes.

This is a foundational lesson because it is so vitally important that you understand what causes MSDs. This is where we see safety leaders get mixed up, and then spend precious resources trying to fix a problem they don’t fully understand.

Keep this in the back of your mind as you learn about the causes of MSDs: your prevention strategy is to eliminate these causes. Your goal is to identify MSD causes in your workplace and put control measures in place to lower, and hopefully eliminate, these causative risk factors.

The Cause of MSDs

The work environment is a complex set of systems and the human body is a complex set of systems. MSDs happen at the intersection of these systems, and so it won’t surprise you that there are many causative risk factors that can lead to the formation of MSDs.

We break these risk factors down into two categories in order to simplify the issues at hand:

1. Ergonomic Risk Factors (risk factors related to the work environment)
2. Individual Risk Factors (risk factors related to the individual themselves)

When workplace athletes are exposed to these risk factors over the course of time, it puts a tremendous amount of stress and strain on their soft tissues. An MSD is formed when this “wear and tear” outruns the workplace athlete’s normal soft tissue recovery process.

Reactive Ergonomics

A reactive ergonomics philosophy allows workplace athletes to be exposed to ergonomic risk factors.

The three primary ergonomic risk factors are:

• High task repetition: Many work tasks and cycles are repetitive in nature, and are frequently controlled by hourly or daily production targets and work processes. High task repetition, when combined with other risks factors such high force and/or awkward postures, can contribute to the formation of MSD. A job is considered highly repetitive if the cycle time is 30 seconds or less.
• Excessive Force: Many work tasks require high force loads on the human body. Muscle effort increases in response to high force requirements, increasing associated fatigue which can lead to MSD.
• Awkward Postures: Awkward postures place excessive force on joints and overload the muscles and tendons around the effected joint. Joints of the body are most efficient when they operate closest to the mid-range motion of the joint. Risk of MSD is increased when joints are worked outside of this mid-range repetitively or for sustained periods of time without adequate recovery time.

Other ergonomic risk factors include:

• Vibration
• Contact stress
• Cold temperatures

Reactive Healthcare

A reactive healthcare philosophy allows workplace athletes to be exposed to individual risk factors and only provides help after an injury occurs.

The primary individual risk factors are:

• Poor work practices: Workplace athletes who use poor work practices, body mechanics and lifting techniques are introducing unnecessary risk factors that can contribute to MSDs. These poor practices create unnecessary stress on their bodies that increases fatigue and decreases their body’s ability to properly recover.
• Poor self-care habits: MSDs develop when fatigue outruns the workplace athlete’s recovery system, causing a musculoskeletal imbalance. Workers who do not properly warm-up for work or get adequate rest and recovery after work put themselves at a higher risk of developing an MSD.
• Poor health habits: Workers who smoke, drink excessively, are obese, or exhibit numerous other poor health habits are putting themselves at risk for not only musculoskeletal disorders, but also for other chronic diseases that will shorten their life and health span.

Ed’s MSD Story

Behind every number at the end of the injury column is a story.

This is Ed’s story.

Before founding Ergonomics Plus, Mark Middlesworth worked at an outpatient rehab facility. And in 1989, that’s where he met Ed.

Unfortunately, Ed had been on quite a journey over a 10-year period leading up to the time they met.

He sustained an initial lower back strain from manual lifting at work which limited his function, requiring medical evaluation and treatment because he couldn’t continue to perform his job. The treatment consisted of pain medication and time off work. He returned to work without rehab or any of the causative risk factors being addressed.

Over the course of the next 10 years, Ed sustained multiple recurring lower back injury incidents. Each time, he would be treated the same way with meds, rest, and case management designed to get him back to work as soon as possible. So, after each episode he returned to work without rehab and consequently developed progressively diminished strength and functional capacity. At the end of this 10 year period, he sustained another injury to his lower back while lifting at work. This time, it was the last straw – one of the discs in his lumbar spine had finally herniated and rendered him incapable of even walking out of the facility. He was transported by ambulance to the local hospital, stabilized, evaluated by the company physician and then referred to a neurosurgical specialist.

The neurosurgeon recommended surgery. After surgery, Ed’s pain worsened and it was (after 6-8 weeks) finally determined that he had developed a serious infection in his back. Four months later, Ed was referred to rehabilitation and work hardening where he met Mark for the first time.

According to Mark, “There was not much we could do for him at that point. We gave it a shot, but in the end he just couldn’t tolerate a rehab program at that point. He ended up on social security disability.”

What was the cause of Ed’s journey that resulted in multiple injuries, painful surgery, and a disability?

Reactive ergonomics: The company Ed worked for had a reactive ergonomics philosophy. Ergonomic risk factors were left unchecked and Ed was exposed to these risk factors over a long period of time.

Reactive healthcare: The company Ed worked for also had a reactive healthcare philosophy. HR was all about aggressive case management as the primary method to contain costs. They only got Ed help after he was already injured, but by then it was too late. Also, Ed would also be the first to tell you that his poor health habits and work practices were part of the problem. He was a smoker and considered his time at work to be his “fitness routine”, and so he thought he didn’t need anything on top of that for maintaining strength and conditioning or to maintain musculoskeletal balance and core strength. Therefore, he developed imbalances over time that ultimately led to significant core weakness and musculoskeletal dysfunction that led to recurring strain injury to his lower back.

The bottom line is that a reactive philosophy only leaves you with one outcome: more MSD stories like Ed. 

How to Prevent Musculoskeletal Disorders

You already know that if MSDs are the result of a reactive approach to ergonomics and healthcare, then prevention is going to require a proactive approach to ergonomics and healthcare. If that’s what you were thinking, you were right. The way to reduce MSD risk factors is to get proactive and systematically put controls in place using a proactive ergonomics and proactive healthcare process.

Prevention is proactive!  

If that sounds so oversimplified to you to the point of seeming ridiculously obvious, that’s good. It means you already get it and you’re on the right track.

You already know that if MSDs are the result of a reactive approach to ergonomics and healthcare, then prevention is going to require a proactive approach to ergonomics and healthcare. If that’s what you were thinking, you were right. The way to reduce MSD risk factors is to get proactive and systematically put controls in place using a proactive ergonomics and proactive healthcare process.

Proactive Ergonomics

A proactive ergonomics process identifies ergonomic risk factors and then reduces them through engineering and administrative controls before an injury occurs.

Conducting an ergonomic risk assessment in response to an injury isn’t a bad thing to do. In fact, it’s what you should do.

But that’s a reactive approach, and if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, then you’re going to keep getting what you’ve been getting — injuries. To wage a war on the MSDs at your facility, you’ll need to get out in front of the problem by being proactive.

Remember that above all else, a world class ergonomics program is proactive and viewed as a strategic continuous improvement process that makes a positive impact on the entire business.

In other words, ergonomics shouldn’t be an afterthought. If your ergonomics program is in reactive mode, it will only have a marginal impact on your facility at best.

Here is the difference.

Reactive ergonomics:

• Waits for an injury to occur before being implemented
• Isn’t tied to strategic initiatives and organizational goals
• Gets little to no funding or leadership support
• Gets marginal results

Proactive ergonomics:

• Is implemented before an injury occurs
• Is viewed as a continuous improvement process (not a one-time program or event)
• Is tied to strategic initiatives and organizational goals
• Gets the funding and leadership support it needs to succeed
• Develops talent and trains up a workforce with an above average ergonomics IQ
• Gets transformational results

If your ergonomics program is reactive in nature, you will be doomed to sub-par results. On the flip side, if your ergonomics program is proactive in nature, then you can continuously improve it all the way to world class status.

Remember: ergonomics is a process, not a program. When you get proactive, your ergonomics process will gain value over time and become a key driver for your organization’s success.

Proactive Healthcare

A proactive healthcare process doesn’t wait for a workplace athlete to develop an MSD before that workplace athlete gets the training, information and coaching they need to remain healthy.

Here is the typical example of how healthcare is delivered to workplace athletes.

The workplace athlete appears to be healthy. Time goes on. The workplace athlete notices that the wear and tear is starting to worsen. More time goes on. The workplace athlete really begins to notice higher levels of fatigue and discomfort on a regular basis. More time passes. The workplace athlete has lost physical function and suffers an MSD. They go to a doctor to get surgery, a prescription and whatever else they need to make a recovery. Hopefully they return to peak health, but it’s unlikely.

This model of healthcare is reactive in philosophy and in practice.  If your company’s healthcare process is in reactive mode, you’re leaving a huge opportunity on the table. Remember that MSDs develop over long periods of time due to microscopic wear and tear to the soft tissues every day. The earlier you provide healthcare, the better the outcome for the workplace athlete and for the company. This is proactive, or preventive, healthcare where the goal is to prevent injuries and avoid costly reactive healthcare.

Here is the difference between reactive and proactive healthcare.

Reactive healthcare:

• Waits for an injury to occur before being implemented
• Delivers the worst health outcome for the person who was injured
• Is the most costly form of healthcare for the company

Proactive healthcare:

• Is implemented before an injury occurs
• Provides workplace athletes with injury prevention tools and techniques through group education workshops and one-on-one training
• Delivers the best health outcome for the workplace athlete
• Is the least costly form of healthcare for the company, providing a strong return on investment

What does a proactive healthcare program look like?

There are different ways to approach this, but we’ve had great success with a “Workplace Athlete” approach. Just like professional sports teams provide their athletes with a Certified Athletic Trainer (ATC), your organization can benefit from embedding an athletic trainer directly into the workplace to provide preventive healthcare for your “workplace athletes”.

The Benefits of Synergy

A synergy exists between proactive ergonomics and proactive healthcare that produces better results together than either element would on its own.

We’ve witnessed the remarkable synergy of proactive ergonomics and proactive healthcare for over 25 years. It’s where the name “Ergonomics Plus” comes from, so we even named our company because of it.

By engaging in both of these proactive, prevention-oriented practices you end up shaping a powerful culture of prevention. This is the real goal we set out to achieve for clients. It’s rewarding to see this process gain momentum. It’s about excellence in health and safety, not merely compliance, and we believe that proactive ergonomics and proactive healthcare combine to help you achieve it.

How to Get Exponential MSD Prevention Results

If you implement the MSD prevention process we outline in this course, it will gain value over time and you will begin to see an exponential return on your investment.

Here’s the catch: you have to get started and you have to be committed to this process over the long haul. If you don’t take action now, you’ll only be putting off the results. Sometimes the most expensive investment is not making one at all.

Reducing MSD risk and shaping a culture of prevention is a long-term commitment. If you start early and stick with it, you’ll reap the benefits and a strong return on your investment.

There is no magic bullet, pixie dust, or super-magical pill you can swallow to prevent the MSDs in your workplace. It takes a comprehensive approach because MSDs occur at the complex intersection of two systems: the work environment and the human body.

Ergonomics 101

A systematic ergonomics improvement process removes risk factors that lead to musculoskeletal injuries and allows for improved human performance and productivity. By making improvements to the work process, you are removing barriers to maximum safe work performance. You are providing your workers with a job that is within their body’s capabilities and limitations.

A proactive ergonomics process identifies ergonomic risk factors and then reduces them through engineering and administrative controls before an injury occurs.

Conducting an ergonomic risk assessment in response to an injury isn’t a bad thing to do. In fact, it’s what you should do.

But that’s a reactive approach, and if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, then you’re going to keep getting what you’ve been getting — injuries. To wage a war on the MSDs at your facility, you’ll need to get out in front of the problem by being proactive.

Remember that above all else, a world class ergonomics program is proactive and viewed as a strategic continuous improvement process that makes a positive impact on the entire business.

In other words, ergonomics shouldn’t be an afterthought. If your ergonomics program is in reactive mode, it will only have a marginal impact on your facility at best.

Here is a deeper dive into the ergonomics improvement process we implement for clients:

Step 1: Prioritize Jobs for Ergonomic Analysis
This prioritized list should be developed by the ergonomics team based on an initial facility tour, review of MSD history and data collected by employee surveys.

Step 2: Conduct Ergonomic Analysis
This analysis will objectively measure risk for each job in the workplace and help you develop an ergonomic opportunity list.

Step 3: Develop an Ergonomic Opportunity List
Developing an ergonomic opportunity list allows you to prioritize company resources in order to effectively and efficiently reduce risk by putting the appropriate controls in place.

Step 4: Determine Best Solution with Team Approach
A multi-disciplinary team should be involved in determining the best controls for implementation.

Step 5: Obtain Final Approval and Implement Solution
If the improvement requires a significant capital expenditure, cost-justify the solution to gain approval.

Step 6: Evaluate the Ergonomic Improvement for Effectiveness
Once improvements are in place, close the loop on the project by evaluating the ergonomic improvement and measuring its effectiveness.

Early Intervention 101

Not all musculoskeletal fatigue requires medical treatment. In fact, when identified early enough most musculoskeletal fatigue and discomfort can be addressed through first-aid measures by an onsite injury prevention specialist. By addressing the root cause of the discomfort, the injury prevention specialist is able to prevent injuries and help you remain compliant.

We know that MSDs develop over the course of time as the result of exposure to risk factors. Carpal tunnel doesn’t happen overnight. Tendonitis doesn’t develop in a day. This means the early warning signs of these injuries are present long before an MSD develops to the point of lost function and pain requiring medical treatment.

Armed with this knowledge, we can implement a proactive strategy to discover the early warning signs of MSDs and fix the underlying causes. This is exactly what early intervention does.

Early intervention is a proactive strategy designed to discover early warning signs of MSDs and prevent the early warning signs from developing into an injury.

The early warning signs of the next 2-3 years’ worth of MSDs are present in your workforce today. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

Assuming you don’t have a crystal ball handy, getting started with early intervention should be on the top of your to-do list.

There are five steps to the early intervention process.

Step 1 – Awareness and Education

Workers need to understand the early warning signs of MSDs so they can recognize them when they appear. It’s important that they understand the fundamental principles of prevention as well as the self-care regimen that is recommended for all employees.

Step 2 – Encourage Early Reporting

Employees should be highly encouraged to report early warning signs of MSDs to supervisors, team leads or directly to the on-site injury prevention specialist. Creating a culture that encourages early reporting is critical to this process.

Step 3 – React Positively and Respond Quickly

Supervisors and team leads should be trained to react positively and respond quickly to early reports of fatigue and discomfort. We often mention being “over the top” positive to these early reports. The injury prevention specialist should be notified immediately and quickly respond to the report.

Over the top and on the hop! Sounds cheesy, but it’s extremely effective in practice.

Step 4 – Conduct the Early Intervention Consultation

When an early report is received, the injury prevention specialist conducts a one-on-one consultation with the employee.

This consultation has three parts:

1. Listen to the employee and understand the problems they are having.
2. Review the self-care program for the employee and make them aware of the prevention tools available to them.
3. Evaluate the job and remove any causative risk factors present through the ergonomics improvement process and implementing the necessary ergonomic controls.

Step 5 – Follow up & Report

The injury prevention specialist should follow up with the employee on a weekly basis until the early signs are resolved and the employee is returned to peak health.

Each of these interactions should be recorded. Results of all early intervention consultations should be compiled and reported on a monthly basis. These reports should be used to identify overall trends and workplace improvement opportunities.

Bonus Tip

You might be thinking that an early intervention process sounds great, but wondering who is qualified to do the early intervention consultations and how you are going to find time for this.

We’ve written before about how a workplace Athletic Trainer deserves to be on your OHS team, and early intervention is where they really shine.

Athletic trainers are allied healthcare professionals specifically trained in injury prevention and human performance. We’re a little biased because we use the Workplace Athletic Trainer model of injury prevention for our clients, but you might consider adding an athletic trainer to your roster! You’ll be glad you did.

Conclusion

Musculoskeletal Disorders develop over the course of time. The early warning signs of future injuries are present in your workforce today.

What are you going to do about it?

Early intervention will allow you to not only find the next three years of injuries, but help you take proactive steps to prevent them from happening.

A proactive healthcare process reduces individual risk factors by implementing a “workplace athlete” model of healthcare. This model of proactive, preventive healthcare will create far more value for your organization than reactively waiting to treat the injuries that will inevitably occur in the traditional, reactive model.

Managing Musculoskeletal Health

Proactive organizations accelerate health and safety excellence by targeting musculoskeletal health.

The total musculoskeletal health solution is to shift your efforts to a prevention-focused, upstream model of care, deploy the upstream model through a specialized provider that bridges the discipline gap, and to leverage technology to break down silos and meet the common goals of organizational stakeholders.

Most organizations lack a critical piece of context about musculoskeletal health, and some organizations miss it entirely. Here it is: managing musculoskeletal health well is a huge opportunity that impacts the entire business.

It impacts the areas you would expect it to like safety and wellness, yes, but it can also have a dramatic impact in other areas like productivity, company culture, and brand reputation.

Safety

The cost of poor musculoskeletal health has been well established. They are the most common and costly injuries in industry today. A well-managed, effective, and sustainable process to prevent these injuries drastically lowers direct and indirect costs. This data alone is sufficient to convince most managers there is enough opportunity to create enough value to see a substantial return on dollars invested in prevention.

Wellness

Wellness programs that focus on weight loss contests and better food in the break room are good. You should do those things. But there is a better way, especially for industrial sites.
Implementing an “industrial athlete” program is a more practical, motivating, and enduring way to educate and motivate your people to adopt healthier lifestyle changes.

Teach them how to use their bodies to work. Teach them useful self-care techniques to prepare their bodies for work and to recover after each work day – just like a professional athlete does.

These programs, often led by an industrial athletic trainer as a best practice, add much more value to the day-to-day operations of your business and to your people’s lives than a flash in the pan, short-term wellness initiative.

Productivity

The ergonomics improvement process reduces ergonomic risk factors and improves the interaction between the work and the worker. Done well, this process removes barriers to productivity and makes job tasks easier and faster to accomplish.

In today’s competitive business environment, it is a mistake to ignore ergonomics as a valuable and necessary process to making the best product in the most efficient way.

Culture

Safety culture is the attitude, beliefs, perceptions and values that employees share in relation to safety in the workplace. When employees are experiencing excessive fatigue, discomfort and eventually injuries what do you think their attitude, belief and perception of your organization is? What do employees think the organization really values?

Mismanaging musculoskeletal health is a culture killer, but consider the flip side for a moment. What if your ergonomics process made regular improvements to the work environment, making jobs easier for employees? What if you had an industrial athlete program that taught employees practical self-care techniques to make their day go better? What if you had an industrial athletic trainer on staff that made regular visits to the shop floor to work one-on-one with employees to make sure fatigue and discomfort is identified early enough so that it could be resolved before an injury occurred?

These regular workplace improvements and actions to improve the lives of your workforce are noticed. It’s how culture is shaped, one workstation and one person at a time.
Brand reputation

We’re living in an advanced society with radical transparency and increasingly high standards and expectations for brands to behave responsibly. In an age of ubiquitous information and a digital social web, nothing happens in a vacuum. Companies are required to be transparent. Word spreads. We are all accountable to each other.

Why not craft a positive brand reputation around your musculoskeletal health initiative? Your people aren’t employees. They’re industrial athletes. They’re on a team. You’re all in it together, building the best product you can as part of a high performing team that is well cared for and cared about.

That’s a brand reputation you can be proud of.

Three organizational imperatives for better musculoskeletal health management

Accomplishing the benefits described above requires adopting a forward-thinking, best practice approach to musculoskeletal health management. Below are three organizational imperatives you must drive in your organization to get there. They are the solutions to the reasons for the current state of musculoskeletal health management that is so ineffective.

1. Shift your focus to a prevention-focused, upstream model of care
2. Deploy the upstream model through a specialized provider who bridges the discipline gap
3. Leverage technology to break down silos and meet the common goals of organizational stakeholders

1. Shift your focus to a prevention-focused, upstream model of care

You can only control so much cost once an injury occurs. That is why for the last several decades, proactive organizations have been progressively moving healthcare upstream.
Move beyond compliance and adopt a prevention-focused, upstream model of health care. It is the most cost-effective, efficient, and sustainable model of care for musculoskeletal health.

2. Deploy the upstream model through a specialized provider who bridges the discipline gap

Musculoskeletal health is a complex issue with physical, environmental, mental, and psychosocial factors. Your organization likely has subject matter experts with much to contribute to proactive musculoskeletal health efforts but organizational silos make these efforts to contribute more difficult.

A comprehensive, total solution is required. Our experience has been that proactive musculoskeletal health initiatives are most successful when deployed through a specialized provider who bridges the discipline gap. Their role is “injury prevention specialist” and their responsibility is exactly that — to prevent injuries through a total, comprehensive approach that incorporates all the musculoskeletal health disciplines.

3. Leverage technology to break down silos and meet the common goals of organizational stakeholders

A technology platform for musculoskeletal health should be used to break down silos and ensure your efforts are meeting the goals of each stakeholder.
Leave behind the paper methods and legacy software that is crippling your ability to manage musculoskeletal health well throughout the organization.