In August 2010, a quality improvement assessment conducted by the occupational medicine marketing team of a large multi-state healthcare system revealed dissatisfaction with current occupational medicine service in a rural northern plains multi-specialty lack of timeliness of mandatory reports and inconsistency with work restrictions. Similar problems are recognized within all aspects of the United States healthcare delivery system. The Institute of Medicine documented lack of are coordination and fragmentation of care as systemic problems that increased costs and decreased quality of care. In September 2010, based on this assessment an occupational medicine project team was formed to investigate the needs for an occupational medicine service line.
