Lankford Construction

Summary

Lankford Construction adopted Emerge Diagnostics’ Electrodiagnostic Functional Assessment (EFA) to more accurately evaluate workers’ injuries.

 

The Challenge

Lankford Construction is a general contractor specializing in renovating interior fixtures for large retailers, such as Amazon, Starbucks, Target, and CVS. Founded in 1951 in Illinois, Lankford now works in all 50 states of the U.S. Its workforce is almost exclusively union members.

Construction often requires intense physical labor and injury rates are among the highest in the private sector. Company leaders were interested in ways to manage those injuries more effectively. “Although we as a company do everything in our power to prevent injury, in our line of work, it’s an ongoing challenge,” says Judi Tipps, director of operations at Lankford. “When someone is injured, I want them to get healthy quickly and get back to work and life.”

“The law requires that, following an injury, I restore any employee back to their previous state of health or compensate them for the injury if that’s not possible,” she notes. In some cases, she says, the path forward is obvious. In many cases, however, it is not. “When there’s an injury, we need to know, to the best of our ability, how and when did the injury occur. What sort of injury is it? Did it actually happen on the job and who can provide the best treatment for them?”

 

Our Solution

Lankford Construction adopted Emerge Diagnostics’ Electrodiagnostic Functional Assessment (EFA) to more accurately evaluate workers’ injuries. 

OSHA requires several criteria be met for a workman’s compensation claim to be required. Among these are death, loss of consciousness, treatment required beyond first aid, or as a result of a doctor or healthcare professional’s diagnosis. 

According to Tipps, many soft-tissue claims don’t rise to meet these requirements. “There’s a huge degree of subjectivity in assessing claims related to purported soft-tissue injuries,” she says. “Emerge’s EFA provides an objective finding for subjective claims.”

 

The Outcome

“Emerge Diagnostics has been invaluable to us as a company,” Tipps says. “My goal is to keep my workers and subcontractors happy and healthy on the job.” 

“It’s a partnership that has kept us in business by providing optimal care for our workers,” says Tipps.