New Clinic Opens for Industrial Workers

With the nation in fierce debate over what America’s health care system should look like, a brand new clinic recently opened on the Coast is trying to make it easier for industrial workers to stay healthy. MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports.

Right off of Industrial Road in Pascagoula, on the edge of some of the biggest manufacturing and shipbuilding plants on the Coast sits the brand new 4500 square foot MedWorks, the first occupational medicine clinic in Jackson County. Richard Lucas, vice president of communications for Singing River Health Systems, says the new clinic was designed to make it easier for employees to recover after being injured on the job,

“We felt like this was a reach out factor, let‘s get that person back to work sooner, give that person a chance to have their needs taken care of quicker when it comes to a workplace situation.”

The MedWorks clinic only handles workers comp cases, but given the number of industrial jobs in Jackson county that will be enough to keep the clinic busy says Dr. John Pessoney, medical director at MedWorks,

“If you go through the workplace out there and you see the jobs that a good number of people in Jackson County are doing it’s amazing. There are a lot of difficult jobs out there and a lot of them involve physical stresses.”

Pessoney says now if workers get injured on the job they’ll only have to come to one location,

“They can get the injury treated. They can get process causing the injury evaluated, to stop the next person from having that injury. We can get them on a set of restrictions where they are able to not re-injure themselves but continue to work until this process heals.”

Pascagoula is home to some the largest industrial plants in the state, including Chevron and Northrop Grumman Shipbuilders.