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7 Occupational health outside the normal travelling distance

Tony | 0 Posts

12 Oct, 2018 19:57

Hi all Yes I'm a newbie so Hello everyone!

So to kick off I have a slight problem that I hope someone can help me out with.

I have an employee who has an alergy to Latex who recently had to be administered with their own epipen and was taken to hospital as a precaution but was ok They came back to work quickly ( they had one day off). However they came back to work and had another reaction (there was a rubber ball of all things in a staff room which they reacted to). They had another 3 days off which I thought was fair enough,my Line manager doesn't agree and wants me to send them to Occupational Health. This is all very well but our OH is in a different county some 80 miles away and I know this will be a struggle for the employee.

This has never happened before and the employee in question has a very good record with very few sick days in the past,for their part the employee hasn't refused to go the the OH but has so far refused to travel the 160 odd mile round trip (which I understand ) but my line manager is insistant.

As a compromise I'm thinking about an over the phone consult as many Doctors surgeries do nowadays but I have a feeling that my line manager maybe difficult about it.

Do you think my idea is plausible?

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Steve Bridger | 0 Posts

Community Manager

18 Oct, 2018 16:43

Welcome to the Community, Tony... and I'm 'bumping' your thread is your post got 'stuck' in the moderation queue in error.
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Gemma | 0 Posts

18 Oct, 2018 17:18

Hi Tony,

Welcome! I cannot see anything wrong with a telephone call between OH and your employee unless OH need to see the workplace - in which case they would need to come to you. I've arranged calls between OH and employees previously and this has worked just as well as face to face depending on the situation.

If your manager is adamant that it needs to be face to face, could you not arrange for OH to come to your site and book out a meeting room or organise a private space for them to meet with the employee?
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Keith | 0 Posts

18 Oct, 2018 17:18

There is no real reason why an initial consultation with Occ Health couldn't be handled over the phone

It would then be down to Occ health if they needed a face to face but in the circumstances I doubt it would be necessary
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Peter Stanway | 0 Posts

18 Oct, 2018 17:40

You also need to get some closer OH
80 miles is ridiculous unless you are in Guernsey or Orkney
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Lesley | 0 Posts

18 Oct, 2018 19:29

In reply to Peter Stanway:
80+ miles for OH support isn't that unusual.

I've travelled about 80 miles to see an Occ Health advisor before because the provider didn't have a suitable doctor in my area at the time, so I needed to go to the one in the next region - my situation at the time was too complex to handle over the phone and I wanted to go back to work, so I was prepared to travel, but I know many people wouldn't have been.

Another employer had their OH provider in London (based onsite at London HQ) and I worked in the Birmingham office, so they would travel up on the train monthly to see patients or if a more urgent consult was needed it would be by phone or the employee may travel down to London for it (and usually combine with other meetings in the London office).

OH can be done remotely in many cases, but if they are regularly insisting on a face-to-face consult, then it would be better to source a local provider.
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Tony | 0 Posts

18 Oct, 2018 21:25

In reply to Lesley:
Thank you all for your replies. Unfortunately I have no control over who the company uses for OH but I have had a break through in this case. I pointed out at a team meeting (this included our CEO) that I thought it unfair that we were sending one of our employees so far to attend an OH appointment and our CEO agreed so as far as this particular problem is concerned a satisfactory conclusion but it will happen again no doubt. On a personal note the problem arose because my line manager didn't get on with this particular employee so was using the OH appointment as a kind of punishment which again I think was out of order however I wasn't aware of this 'history' between them at the first instance .
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Lesley | 0 Posts

22 Oct, 2018 13:41

In reply to Tony:
That's totally out of order and occupational health should NEVER be viewed or treated as a punishment - we should be making that process as easy as possible for the employee. Glad you managed to get a satisfactory solution though.
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