Your Guide to
How KINNECT can Help With Health Surveillance
We provide a full range of services that take the effort out of planning and implementing a health surveillance program.
Just starting out? Ask us for advice.
If you are just starting out, reach out to us for an initial scoping session, which will give you an idea of how we can assist you.
How KINNECT can Help
Creating a compliant health surveillance program requires a high level of knowledge about current legislation, hazardous substances and workplace risk; an experienced provider to administer medicals; and the oversight of an occupational health doctor. These KINNECT service areas have you completely covered:
Program Set Up
From start to finish, KINNECT can help you establish and deliver a compliant health surveillance program.
Health Surveillance Medicals
KINNECT can deliver a range of legislative and hazard-specific medicals, plus monitoring services such as respirator fit testing.
Occupational Medicine
You can nominate KINNECT as your Appointed Medical Advisor, or they can support your health monitoring program as your Supervising Medical Officer.
Setting up your program
Our experienced occupational health consultants can guide you through the set-up, rollout and ongoing management of your program. Here’s how we can work with you:
Step 1
Engage an Occupational Hygienist
An Occupational Hygienist is specially trained to review all the potential environmental hazards or risks that workers may be exposed to during their working day.
KINNECT will refer you to GCG, our preferred provider for occupational hygiene services to review all of the work environments for your employees, creating a ‘Health Risk Assessment’. This is a comprehensive report detailing the significance of the exposures to hazards; including whether the exposure is low or high, helping to determine which workers would require periodic health assessments.
Learn more about hazardous substance exposure by searching our directory
Step 2
Engage an Occupational Physician
An Occupational Physician is a highly trained doctor with clinical expertise in how work affects people’s health.
KINNECT’s Occupational and Environmental Physician will review the Health Risk Assessments prepared by GCG and provide medical recommendations, in line with any current legislation that applies to your business.
They will then determine the specific health assessment criteria to be used in developing your program. This input ensures that the program meets any legislative requirements and is modelled on best practice for your industry, ensuring the utmost safety of employees.
Step 3
KINNECT begins work as your Occupational Health Provider
Following advice from the Occupational Phyisician, KINNECT will map out the specific health monitoring requirements for each ‘Similar Exposure Group’ of employees.
A ‘Similar Exposure Group’ (SEGS) refers to employees who are grouped with others who are likely to face similar hazards in their daily work life. Their specific group, together with relevant legislation, determines which tests will be included in the periodic health assessment and how frequently they will be tested.
Your requirements will be set up in the Monitor module of Carelever, a cloud-based software platform that automates many of the complex workflows involved in managing an occupational health program to maintain compliance, coordinate scheduling and appointments, and collect and deliver results —all from one place.
Step 4
Rollout & Integrate Your Periodic Health Surveillance Program
KINNECT can then support your business with the rollout of the program and manage your periodic health surveillance program going forward. We can deliver your program from any one of our 18 offices nation-wide and over 300 Affiliate Partner clinics.
We can also help you to integrate your health monitoring program with your pre-employment medicals, ensuring your employees are safe and healthy from hire to retire.
FAQ
Health Monitoring Testing & sign off at KINNECT
Information that must be provided and/or collected for Baseline Monitoring
The specific information collected during Baseline or Initial Monitoring can vary and will depend on the scheme or the substance triggering the monitoring program (you can see specific requirements if you search our hazardous exposure directory), however is likely to include a number of key elements. Information you’ll need to provide or data that will be collected at this stage include:
Demographic data —provided by the PCBU
- name and date of birth of the worker.
Details of the work—provided by the PCBU
- a description of the work that triggered the requirement for health monitoring
- details of control measures used in current work, including whether suitable personal protective equipment is used, and
- if the worker has started that work, how long the worker has been carrying out that work.
Additional information that should be provided includes:
- a list of the hazardous chemicals that the worker is or will be exposed to
- the dates that the worker last used the chemicals
- the safety data sheet (SDS) for the chemicals, and
- relevant risk assessment reports, details of workplace exposure standards and results of any air monitoring carried out at the workplace.
Risk assessment reports should contain information about:
- likely exposures at the workplace
- control measures that are in place to minimise exposure
- investigations of results where workplace exposure standards have been exceeded, or
- where surface wipe testing indicates accumulation of chemicals on surfaces.
Previous work history—collected by the registered medical practitioner
- past work history, including previous known or suspected exposures to the hazardous chemical currently being used and other hazardous chemicals, and
- potential for exposure in current work.
Medical history—collected by the registered medical practitioner
- presence of symptoms that may be due to or exacerbated by exposure
- relevant medical conditions that may increase health risk from exposure, and
- other relevant information, for example smoking history.
Physical examinations and biological monitoring
Physical examinations may be required during initial monitoring. If a physical examination is required, it will place emphasis on the target organs or systems that may be affected. For some chemicals a physical examination is only required if work and medical history indicates this is necessary, such as where symptoms are present. In other cases, collection and analysis of biological samples, for example urine or blood may also be required.
Details of the physical examinations required for different monitoring items can be found in our hazardous exposure directory.
Proactive discussions about the health monitoring program
A proactive discussion about the health monitoring program should be conducted with the worker. Information about the program including what is involved, for example the frequency and type of testing, and information about the effects of exposure to the particular substance and how to recognise and report symptoms should be provided to the worker.
Discussions should also include instances when health monitoring may change. For example, this may be required if it is indicated by test results or symptoms or if a worker falls pregnant.
Nominating KINNECT as your Appointed Medical Advisor
It’s a legal requirement to have one or more medical practitioners nominated as your ‘Appointed Medical Advisor’ or ‘Supervising Medical Officer’ for your company’s health monitoring program.
What does an AMA do?
The AMA’s role is to carry out, supervise and report on health assessments for your employees. They will also have a responsibility for referring on or following up screening for employees who have abnormal findings.
Doctors performing AMA duties have to meet certain qualifications and experience to conduct these assessments and will be required to participate in regular training.
How do you appoint an AMA?
There is a particular form you will need to complete, depending on the type of assessment/scheme that your employees health assessments fall under. In addition to providing a copy for KINNECT, you will also need to provide a copy to the regulator. KINNECT can provide you with further advice about this.
Who are KINNECT's Doctors
We employ a sizeable team of Occupational Physicians and Occupational Health Doctors that can provide AMA services to your business. For continuity purposes, our clients prefer to appoint more than one AMA so that there is more than one person able to act where required.
Find our more about our Clinical Experts.
Search our
Hazardous Exposure Directory.
KINNECT’s comprehensive guide to all the different monitoring requirements for chemicals, workplace hazards and legislative medicals.
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