Success Stories | "As a business resource Southcoast is great."

CLAUDIA MULLANE
Director of Human Resources, Julius Koch USA

CLAUDIA MULLANE Director of Human Resources, Julius Koch USA

Southcoast Hospitals means a lot to me because my employees live between the cities of Fall River, New Bedford and Wareham. Southcoast provides practically all of our medical services through our health insurance plan. Our work-related injuries and illnesses are also referred out to Southcoast Hospitals Group.

Southcoast's Occupational Health program provides us with a myriad of services, including our Employee Assistance Program. We've done ergonomic programs to help our employees prevent injuries. Every time there's an injury, we send the employee to St. Luke's Hospital. I get documentation every day from Southcoast and they take good care of my people.

We have had a lot of musculo-skeletal disorders related to repetitive motions and some issues related to ergonomics. We have people from four foot eight to six foot four working at the same workstations — and that can cause problems. Physical therapists from Southcoast came in and really got to know our work. They designed a program called the Healthy Working Series that focused on healthy hands, good upper body mechanics, a back school and proper ergonomics.

We spent a lot of time last year training our employees on all those issues. Because of Southcoast, I feel that my people are very well educated with regard to body mechanics. And we are actually experiencing 70 percent fewer injuries this year as compared to last year, so I think it has had a great effect.