Occupational Health Services

Our occupational health service helps you look after your most valuable asset: your staff. It can help:

• reduce absence
• sustain and increase productivity
• cut the cost of recruitment and training
• reduce stress
• help you maintain customer service
• meet your legal requirements and reduce the possibility of legal action against you
• show your workforce that you are a caring employer, which can help to improve motivation and goodwill
• increase profits.

Services we offer include:

• pre-employment screening
• health screens
• long-term sickness reviews
• flu vaccinations
• drug and alcohol testing
• industry-specific risk assessments

Pre-Employment screening

By ensuring that new staff do not bring chronic health problems to your business, you gain a significant improvement in the health of your workforce

We can offer more extensive executive pre-employment screening to reflect your investment in your senior staff and their value to your company.

Long-Term Sickness Reviews

One of the significant causes of absenteeism is the small number of staff who go on long-term sick leave. We are experienced at dealing with these cases, and we are able to produce valuable information in relation to prognosis and return-to-work schedules.

Health Screening

Health screening can:

• detect serious diseases early
• provide health education leading to improvements in lifestyle and work practice
• provide baseline results for future reference.

Providing health screening keeps your workforce healthy, shows duty of care and makes your staff feel valued. It can be a valuable tool in staff recruitment and retention.

Night Worker Health Assessments

It is now a legal obligation to offer night workers an annual health screen. However, the good news is that we can offer these to client companies for a nominal fee, or a full physical can be undertaken if required.

Drug and Alcohol Testing

In safety-sensitive industries it may be necessary to prove your workforce is free of drugs and alcohol. We give expert advice in relation to this, and provide random or general screening using accepted protocols.

This can be difficult ground- if drug/alcohol testing were in conjunction with a disciplinary policy, this would not be the responsibility of the OH physician- this is “policing” and is the responsibility of the company as part of its security policy. If it is used as a detection for drug abuse, with the idea of remediable help, then OH has a role, but disciplinary measures may still be needed.

Specialist Health Checks

The Stokes Medical centre can carry out the full range of specialist and industry specific tests and inoculations, from trace element testing, lung function testing and audiometry to vaccination for hepatitis or checking immunity levels.

Flu vaccinations

Flu vaccination can reduce sick leave; a study in the prestigious New England Journal showed “Vaccination reduced upper respiratory illness episodes by 24%, sick leave by 43% and physicians' office visits by 44%” (Nichol, Lind, Margolis, et al, New England Journal of Medicine 1995 333:889-993). Need we say more?

Mandatory medical provision

Some medical provision is mandatory, e.g. under The Working Time Directive, night-workers must be offered an annual medical, as must workers in various safety-sensitive industries, such as airlines. We can advise you on this.

For more information on our occupational health service please email info@gp-L81019.nhs.uk or call us on 01454 610212 quoting Occupational Health