If your employees work with chemicals or in a hazardous environment, a Health Surveillance program can help monitor their health and wellbeing.
The purpose of a Health Surveillance, Health Monitoring or a Periodic Health Assessment Program is to systematically check employees’ health to ensure that their working environment does not negatively or adversely affect them. By looking out for small changes, and intervening before a problem starts to get worse, their health can be better protected.
As a national occupational health provider, KINNECT have a team of dedicated Occupational Physicians and Occupational Health Doctors who help companies to plan and manage their health surveillance programs, and a network of clinics across the country to provide health assessments.  Â
What is Health Surveillance?Â
Health surveillance is a system of ongoing health checks to help businesses manage the risk to their employees. These health checks may be required by law in industries where employees may be exposed to noise or vibration, ionising radiation, solvents, fumes, dusts, biological agents and other substances hazardous to health, or work in compressed air. Sometimes businesses may not be legally required to adopt a health check program but will do so to protect their employees (for instance, from sun exposure).Â
If you aren’t sure whether you need to or not, KINNECT can help guide you through the relevant steps to make sure you are meeting your responsibilities.Â
Health Monitoring MedicalsÂ
KINNECT provides a full range of Health Monitoring services for all types of exposures and chemicals. Explore some of the different Medicals we can perform on the links below:Â
Setting up a Health Assessment programÂ
Developing a Health Monitoring or Surveillance program for your employees is a complex process that requires expert knowledge. KINNECT can help guide you through from set up, right through to the rollout and ongoing management of your program.Â
STEP 1:  Engaging an Occupational Hygienist Â
An Occupational Hygienist is specially trained to review all the potential environmental hazards or exposures that workers may be exposed to during their working day. KINNECT will refer you to GCG, our preferred provider for Occupational Hygienist 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. Â
STEP 2:  Engaging of Occupational Physician Â
An Occupational Physician is a highly trained doctor with clinical expertise in how work affects people’s health. Dr Graeme Edwards is KINNECT’s Occupational and Environmental Physician. He will review the Health Risk Assessments prepared by GCG and provide medical recommendations. He determined what specific health assessment criteria would be used in developing your Health Assessment program. This input ensures that the program will meet any legislative requirements and ensure the program is modelled on best practice for your industry to ensure the utmost safety of employees. Â
STEP 3:  Engage KINNECT as your Occupational Health  Provider Â
Following Dr Edwards’ advice, KINNECT will map out the specific health monitoring requirements for each ‘Similar Exposure Group’ of employees. ‘Similar Exposure Group’  or SEGS means employees are grouped with other employees who are likely to face similar exposure to hazards in their daily working life. The group that they are placed in will determine what tests will be in the periodic health assessment and how frequently they will be tested. Â
STEP 4: Rollout & Integration of Your Periodic Health Assessment program Â
KINNECT can then support your business with the rollout of the program and manage your periodic health assessment program going forward.  We can also help you to integrate your health monitoring programme into your pre-employment medicals, ensuring your employees are safe throughout the whole lifecycleÂ
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT INTEGRATING YOUR HEALTH SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM WITH YOUR PRE-EMPLOYMENT MEDICALS
CLIENT STORIES
Mitchell Services Limited (ASX: MSV)
Mitchell Services Limited (ASX: MSV) is Australia’s leading provider of drilling services to the global exploration, mining and energy industries. These services extend across three key drilling divisions: exploration, mine services and underground.
KINNECT have partnered with Mitchell Services since 2015. Our scope of work includes delivering pre-employment medicals, functionals, health surveillance, injury management and Coal Mine Workers Health assessments nationally. Since 2015, we have successfully delivered over 2000 pre-employment assessments for Mitchell Services.
Managing your Health Surveillance ProgramÂ
Companies and organisations across Australia turn to KINNECT because we help make managing their Health Monitoring programs easy. Part of what makes our service more efficient is our bespoke Health monitoring IT platform, Carelever Monitor. Â
The Carelever monitor module enables you to automate and streamline your organisation’s health monitoring programs.  Â
Using Carelever’s company settings means you don’t need to remember all the unique testing requirements and frequencies for each site or job role. All the information is defaulted and automated ensuring 100% compliance for your health monitoring programs at all times.
The benefits of health surveillance programs and using KINNECT’s Carelever Monitor platform include:
- Risk Management: Regular testing to monitor your health and keeps employees safer at work;
- Early Intervention: Spotting small changes earlier helps to prevent serious disease or harm to an employee;
- Reduce Admin: You don’t need to keep track of which employees need what tests and how frequently.
- Meeting Regulatory Compliance: Never miss a test. You’ll can see exactly which employees are due for a test at the click of a button.
- Full Integration: KINNECT is able to support your business from before you hire an employee, right through until they leave your business.Â
While it isn’t the main purpose of the program, the other key benefit to engaging in health surveillance is that the testing can sometimes pick up other serious health issues, unrelated to work, that an individual may not have been aware of.Â
STEP 1: Employees are enrolled in Carelever where health monitoring information is securely stored.
STEP 2: Carelever will notify you when employees are due for an appointment. Employees will then get a text message from KINNECT to confirm their location and availability for an appointment.Â
STEP 3: They will attend an appointment with a medical practitioner either at a KINNECT clinic or with one of our 300 KINNECT Affiliate Clinics. The tests conducted will depend on what Similar Exposure Group they belong to. The assessment could include a consultation, physical examination, clinical tests and/or x-rays.Â
STEP 4: After their assessment, one of KINNECT’s specially trained Occupational Health Doctors will review the information and write a report. You will be notified if there are any concerns with the employee’s health or if the doctor makes any recommendations about improvements.Â
STEP 5: The information is stored in Carelever until the employee’s next routine appointment. Â
With our health monitoring services, you will benefit by:
- A trusted partner to guide your company through the design and development of your health monitoring program, right through to the rollout and integration into your pre-employment medicals.
- Reliable and efficient programs to ensure the health and wellbeing of your employees.
- Reduced administration. Say goodbye to tracking on a spreadsheet. Our Carelever Monitor means you’ll never miss a test – you can see who is overdue or up to date at any point, ensuring you’ll be compliant.
The challenges of managing a health surveillance program:
- Setting up a health monitoring program is a complex task that requires expert knowledge.
- Managing a health surveillance program via a spreadsheet is time-consuming and inefficient.
- It can be challenging to stay on top of all of the testing requirements for employees working in different roles, sites and facing different exposures.
- Employee health is critical and not managing this correctly can lead to poor employee health and reputational, legal and financial risks.
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