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Thank you for your interest in our clinics.  We are committed to becoming the leaders in occupational health and safety in mid-Missouri.  We define mid-Missouri as including the following counties:

Those counties that are underlined, however, are those that we will be able to reach out to most easily as we begin our work in mid-Missouri.  This is due to the limitations of staff and the locations of our first two clinics:  Columbia and Mexico.

Drs. Runde and Thomas are the only board-certified occupational & environmental medicine (OEM) physicians in Columbia, Missouri.  The American Board of Preventive Medicine certifies specialists in OEM.  In 2003, they listed "diplomates" in the following locations:

  (To do your own search for currently board-certified physicians in occupational medicine, please click here.)

Most of these are in the major metropolitan areas.  Physicians who are trained but not yet board certified are frequently called "board-eligible."  These board-eligible physicians are not listed.  Each February, lists of newly certified physicians are posted on the Board's web page.

Even among these trained and board-certified OEM physicians, few are striving to develop the full potential of their training.  Many are employed by "industrial medicine" clinics.  Such clinics typically limit their health care providers to treating injured workers.  Their OEM physicians are well trained to evaluate and treat the injured workers.  They are also well trained to evaluate the causation and return-to-work issues involved in the management of workers' compensation cases.  To this end, some of the clinics for which they work may allow them to do site visits to client companies. 

Others of the OEM specialists work at large facilities such as the Daimler-Chrysler assembly plants in the St. Louis area.  During the course of Dr. Runde's training, he spent some time in these facilities. Dr. Thomas was a full-time physician at the Hazelwood, MO, Ford assembly plant before its closure. These large facilities have full time occupational health and safety departments.  The health and safety departments work together in these facilities.  This leads to improvement in the work environment -- and the workers' compensation costs associated with problems in the work environment.  (For the naysayers who have accessed this web page, it is true that there will always be room for improvement.)

The model of a team approach to reducing the burden of workers' compensation and to achieving safe and healthy workplaces, we believe, is the best approach.  The team should consist of an OEM physician, a safety professional and an industrial hygienist (at least one of these should have proficiency in ergonomics).  This would be a minimum for the team.  Ideally, certified occupational health nurses (COHN), ergonomics professionals, physical therapists and occupational therapists would be involved.  If physician's assistants and/or nurse practitioners were used, they should be certified in occupational medicine.

In some companies, the minimal team requirements may be somewhat met by having a safety professional on-site, a "company physician" and the name of an IH professional to call when needed.  The long term goal of R.O.E.P. is to supply client companies with the following resources (either directly or by appropriate referrals):

This team will enable us to work closely with each of our clients to quickly and effectively evaluate and treat workers for injuries and illness.  It will allow us to evaluate workplaces for hazards and recommend measures to reduce these hazards .  Depending upon the latitude allowed by the individual client company, we may also: assist in policy and procedure development; and oversee physical and administrative workplace changes.