More than ever, effective Environmental, Health, Safety, and Quality (EHSQ) programs can make a significant contribution to the well-being of a company’s workforce and the bottom line of an organization. Occupational Health professionals are charged with managing the complexities of medical surveillance. They have to record employee health data from workplace injuries and illnesses, clinic visits, immunizations, audiometric exams, flu clinics, wellness programs, and lab tests. Beyond this, it’s not enough to just collect the data; they must be able to analyze and report on it in multiple formats.
I typically categorize these challenges into five areas: surveillance, reporting, data collection, communication, and demonstrating value or return on investment (ROI).
Medical surveillance:
Your job is to ensure employees are up-to-date on their mandatory screening and exams. But, can you easily select employees and assign them to surveillance groups based on job and location? Is it time-consuming to communicate with employees about scheduled appointments and exam results? Can you report on all employees who are behind in their screening?
Reporting:
Have you or anyone else in your clinic ever had to spend hours or even days pulling paper files to assemble aggregate health information? Can you easily provide management with reports on what is causing visits to the clinic, i.e. clinic visit log or utilization?
Data collection:
Can you easily manage and report on the data from clinic visits, exams, flu clinics, wellness programs, and lab results? Are you spending too much reactive ‘busy time’ or can you be proactive in improving your EHS program, taking actions on the insights you are gaining from your data and your own experiences
Communication:
How much time do you spend on the phone or emailing and sharing documents? Would it be easier if a report about the employee’s disposition was sent automatically to the employee, their supervisor, to Safety, and to Workers’ Compensation so you can focus on patient care
ROI:
Can you demonstrate the value of the clinics’ services? Can you show the time savings for employees visiting an onsite clinic for things like physical therapy as opposed to the lost time from an employee traveling to an offsite clinic or hospital?
If you can relate to some of these challenges then we can help. Check out our Occupational Health Management Software.
