Hessington Health – Occupational Health Service

We offer our corporate clients the following services:

• Sickness Surveillance: Your organisation will be given access to a secure web-based tool which will help you manage inappropriate absence from work. This will be supported with medical input from a doctor who is a trained Occupational Health Physician. Access by subscription to our unique web based tool SMaRT Absence Management.
• Occupational Health Surveillance: As an employer you will have certain statutory responsibilities in undertaking health surveillance in your work place. We are trained to undertake these assessments on site or in our clinic at Spire Bushey Hospital. We will give practical advice which will be in line with current legislation. Generally, site visits are required for these assessments, which we can arrange with little notice.
• Occupational Health Screening: This service is offered to employers who choose to invest in the health of their work force by offering their employees a yearly medical health assessment. This has been shown to increase job satisfaction and reduction in ill health from work. All of our assessments will be undertaken at Spire Bushey Hospital. Your employees will have access to our physiotherapy and psychological well-being departments as well as access to all of our highly qualified consultants.
• Drug Screening: It is becoming a requirement in certain industries for employees to have a random drug screen. We specialise in implementing and monitoring an in-house random drug screening program.

What Is The Evidence For Investing In The Health And Wellbeing Of The Work Force?

There has been a slow uptake of wellness programmes as employers in the UK in general have not considered it their role to improve the health and well-being of their workforce. There are 2 documented and robust reviews that put forward a strong business case for the implementation of wellness screening.

Please follow the link for each of them for a detailed review of their findings and recommendations.

• PriceWaterHouseCoopers: Building the case for wellness 4th February 2008 [1].
• Dame Carol Black’s Review of the health of Britain’s working age population [2].

The two reviews have drawn similar conclusions which have been summarised as follows:

The available literature suggests that programme costs can quickly be translated into financial benefits, either through cost savings or additional revenue generation, as a consequence of the improvement in a wide range of intermediate business measures.

Cost benefit analysis show that sickness absence is what benefits the most from a wellness programme [1, p5].

Wellness in the workplace is important because the HSE estimates that muscular disorders are responsible for 9.5 million lost working days in 2005/6, 13.8 million working days lost in 2006/7 due to work related stress. Stress and low back pain costs the British economy £3.7 billion and £5 billion per year respectively. According to the Confederation of British Industry, sickness absence can cost roughly £495 per employee per year, which can be a particularly high cost for a small to medium sized enterprise [1, p15].

Corporate Social Responsibility

For many years, European companies have regarded wellness as a duty of corporate social responsibility. Changes are taking place in company management as a result of government pressure to attempt to reduce the burden on public services.

Dame Carol Black identified 10 key challenges and recommendations [2, p16].

1. The economic cost of sickness absence is over £100 billion a year
2. The evidence base to support the business case to invest in occupational health is inadequately understood
3. Lack of appropriate information and advice is the most common barrier for employers investing in health and wellbeing
4. Society insufficiently recognises the importance of physical and mental health in the working age people
5. GPs often feel ill-equipped to offer advice in occupational health related matters
6. Better understanding of the sickness certification process, and fitness to work
7. Majority of business unsupported when it comes to employees in the early stage of their illness as GPs unable to offer occupational health advice
8. The scale of the numbers on incapacity benefits represents an historical failure of healthcare and employment support for the workless in Britain
9. Detachment of occupational health from mainstream healthcare undermines holistic patient care
10. Existing departmental structures prevent Government from fully playing its part in meeting the challenges set out in this review

Our expertise lays in the ability to assess an organisations occupational health needs and putting forward a business case that leads to organisation cost savings and a healthier/happier work force. As no two businesses are the same a bespoke occupational health service is created for each client. Please contact us to see how we can help.