How to make a strong internal business case for implementing occupational health software

Occupational health software is not a 'nice to have'. It is a crucial tool to protect a critical data asset, ensure compliance with important legislation and an obvious way to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

So why does the occupational health department always seem to be last in line to receive support from finance, HR and IT when they want to implement dedicated software?

Here are some thoughts on how you can make your case to IT, HR and finance to help make those internal conversations a little less painful...

Protect a critically important data asset

• In many organisations, there is generally a poor understanding of what occupational health actually do, and in particular that the department is the custodian of incredibly sensitive health data on the organisations' employees. Under GDPR, this kind of information falls into Special Category Data, which means there are strict rules and increased penalties for any data breaches. At the very least, this should cause occupational health data be a key item on your CFO or Chief Information Officer's risk register, and a data asset that they should be very careful of protecting. So our first pointer, is to make sure that senior stakeholders in your organisation are aware of the serious risks and consequences of a data breach of occupational health data.

• Non-clinical professionals should not have access to patient clinical data. In some organisations, occupational health data is stored on a shared drive or spreadsheet which can be accessed by HR or members of the IT team. Inappropriate access to medical records by someone from another department would constitute a data breach. With dedicated occupational health software, 'role based access' means that each member of the organisation is granted appropriate and strictly controlled access only to the files that they need and where the relevant patient consent has been obtained.

• Under GDPR, individuals are entitled to request all data that is held on them - a Subject Access Request. If you are not using a dedicated occupational health platform and have patient records split across various shared files, shared drives and different people's email inboxes, then pulling together all of an individual's records to respond to a Subject Access Request will be very difficult. If this record is not complete, this is a breach of GDPR rules and may place your organisation at risk of suffering legal penalties. With a dedicated occupational health software platform like Orchid Live, all patient records are stored in a logical hierarchy, and it is a two click, 20 second process to export an individual's medical record.

Ensure compliance with HSE and COSHH legislation

• Ensuring that your organisation remains up to date with its COSHH / statutory health surveillance obligations is a big responsibility - both in terms of preventing harm to employees, but also because of the legal and financial penalties that may be imposed by HSE and other regulatory bodies if you are found to be out of compliance on your recalls. In organisations where employees can have multiple required surveillances, each on different recall schedules, it can be hard to keep track and stay compliant. Dedicated occupational health software can systematically track your recalls and alert you when you're falling behind on your health surveillance program.

• If you're lucky enough to be subject to a HSE investigation, they may ask for evidence of health surveillance having been conducted properly. Where records are scattered across various shared files and shared drives, there is a risk that you're not able to pull together this information in a comprehensive way to satisfy the inspector. With a dedicated software platform, you can easily present all surveillances conducted between certain dates, for certain clients/departments, filter by outcomes and diagnoses, and provide a detailed audit trail if required of who interacted with the medical record.

Increased Team Efficiency & Cost-Savings

Many occupational health teams have large support teams of admin staff. With specialist occupational health software, many of these tasks can be automated or streamlined:

• Reduce employee non-attendance by using automatic SMS reminders for appointments

• Receive referrals and pre-placement requests digitally to save transcribing or scanning in paper forms

• Allow line managers and HR to track the progress of referrals and pre-placements to eliminate the need to 'chase' occupational health for status updates

• Quickly put together fitness certificates and case reports

• Share reports quickly and securely with patients, line managers and HR

• Easily prepare KPIs and analytics for key stakeholders

• Manage patient consent electronically

• Allow employees to book their own appointments

• Automatically initiate follow-up surveillance when a recall is coming up

• Move correspondence from email to focussed secure messaging, where all correspondence is automatically tagged against an employee profile

The work that occupational health teams perform is critical work - in terms of employee health, and the legal/financial risk that the business is exposed to if that work is not done properly or the data not adequately protected. Putting dedicated occupational health software in place is crucial - and it's important that non-clinical stakeholders in your business appreciate that.