OSHA Medical Surveillance, Coordinated End-to-End and Always Audit-Ready

OSHA medical surveillance is the ongoing medical monitoring of employees exposed to specific workplace hazards, required by individual OSHA standards so exposure-related health effects are detected early. A program defines which exams are required, how often they repeat, what the provider must report to the employer, and how long records are kept. It is monitoring tied to exposure, not a one-time pre-hire physical.

A program is required when employees are exposed to a regulated hazard at or above the action level in the applicable standard. Examples: any employee who must wear a respirator needs a medical evaluation under 29 CFR 1910.134; occupational noise at the 85 dBA action level triggers audiometric testing under 1910.95; respirable silica above the action level 30 or more days a year triggers exams under 1910.1053. The trigger is measured exposure, not job title.

It depends on the hazard. Noise programs use baseline and annual audiograms; respirator programs use a medical evaluation questionnaire and, when indicated, an exam; lead programs use periodic blood-lead testing; silica and asbestos programs use exams that can include chest imaging and lung-function (spirometry) testing. Each OSHA standard specifies its own required tests and schedule, which is what Occu-Med maps for your specific exposures.

Most employee exposure and medical records must be kept for the duration of employment plus 30 years under 29 CFR 1910.1020. A few programs use different retention periods, but the long horizon is why durable, audit-ready recordkeeping is a core part of every program Occu-Med runs, and why scattered records across multiple clinics become a liability at inspection time.

The employer. The employer is legally responsible for ensuring required exams happen on schedule, that results are acted on, and that records are retained for the full period. The clinic performs the exam, but the compliance and recordkeeping obligation stays with the employer, which is exactly the burden Occu-Med takes on as your program coordinator.

Occu-Med coordinates the program and directs it around the clinics and licensed providers in our nationwide network, who perform the exams. We manage who needs testing, scheduling, results, fitness determinations, and recordkeeping, so you have one accountable partner for the entire program rather than juggling individual clinic relationships.

Yes. Occu-Med runs one consistent program across every location through a national provider network, so a multi-site employer gets the same protocols, quality, and recordkeeping everywhere, instead of managing a separate clinic relationship at each site and reconciling records by hand.

Cal/OSHA enforces Title 8 standards that can be stricter than federal OSHA, and it has programs with no federal equivalent, such as the Aerosol Transmissible Diseases standard (8 CCR 5199) covering tuberculosis screening in healthcare and other settings. An employer compliant under federal rules can still fall short in California, so California programs must be built to the state requirement. As a Fresno-based coordinator, Occu-Med works in both frameworks daily.