SEQOHS standards for Occupational Health
SEQOHS is a set of standards and a voluntary accreditation scheme for occupational health services in the UK and beyond
SEQOHS stands for ‘Safe, Effective, Quality Occupational Health Service’ and is a set of standards and a voluntary accreditation scheme for occupational health services both in the UK and overseas. This is the formal recognition that shows an occupational health service provider has demonstrated it has the competence to deliver against the measures in the SEQOHS standards.
SEQOHS standards compliance supported by Cohort
Essentially, the ability to report on various aspects of an occupational health service is vital. One of the simplest principles of Cohort is that if the data is in the system, it can be reported on. But did you know that there are other ways in which we can support you in the accreditation and re-validation process, for example:
- Domain B1 : An OH service must ensure that OH clinical records, wherever held, are maintained to standards which meet legal and regulatory compliance and professional practice
- Medgate UK as an organisation are ISO27001 accredited
- Our data center is ISO27001 accredited
- Data is encrypted in transit using HTTPS (TLS 1.0 or later).
- Any information at rest within the Cohort Hosted Solution is encrypted to AES-256 using ‘Self Encrypting Drives’ (SEDs)
- Domain E1 : An OH service must agree with purchasers at the outset, the processes for referrals to the OH service; case management; reporting of cases of occupational disease and any onward referral or workers for further investigation
- For hosted customers Medgate UK provides a free test environment to enable you to show and to agree with your purchasers how the software will enable the paper free delivery of referrals.
- The system will also capture referral KPI’s along with bespoke reports which can be written and scheduled to be delivered at agreed times
Our Occupational Health Product Consultant Sue Carty has drafted a paper describing how Cohort V10 underpins the required evidence gathering process whether you are just applying for accreditation, at annual renewal or the re-accreditation stage.
Contact us directly for a copy of this document.
Ruth Alston Memorial Lecture (RAML)
Ruth Alston Memorial Lecture proudly sponsored by Medgate UK as part of the recent Health & Wellbeing at Work Conference in Birmingham
The Ruth Alston Memorial Lecture (RAML) takes place annually on the evening between the exhibition days of the Health & Wellbeing at Work Conference in Birmingham. Medgate UK are proud to have been long-term sponsors of this event for many years now. AOHNP President Diane Romano-Woodward opened the evening by introducing Carol Cholerton.
Carol discussed how, twenty-five years ago, AOHNP developed a workshop (with Cranfield University Business School) to consult occupational health nurses. A vision was formulated, obstacles identified and solutions found. These solutions were incorporated into a five year AOHNP business plan.
Carol also shared her belief that occupational health nurses are the only truly autonomous nursing professionals.
This year attendees were delighted to hear from Heather White, networking specialist and CEO of Smarter Networking Ltd as the keynote speaker. Heather specialises in networking and personal brand. Her session was enlightening, insightful and fun. She explained the art of networking and professional brand is, “about building up a strong network of contacts who understand you, your expertise/experience and your products/services and are able to recommend you when the moment arises”.
The evening was finally wrapped up with a three course dinner and wine (the portion of the evening sponsored by us here at Medgate UK) and a prize draw.
AOHNP President Diane Romano-Woodward commented:
“Going for the topic of networking for the RAML was a controversial choice, but it worked out well. Those who attend from all the professions in work and heath commented on what practically useful and enjoyable evening it had been We are grateful to Medgate UK, the builders of Cohort occupational health software, for being a major sponsor of the evening.”
MoHaWK reporting standards and Occupational Health
MoHaWK is the national web-based bench-marking tool which supports local audit for occupational health services
MoHaWK is used to measure evidence-based clinical practice and processes in order for services to identify if improvements are required. It also allows services to benchmark against their peers.
Round 10 is now complete and contrary to some beliefs, MoHaWK is not just for the NHS; it is an extremely valuable tool for occupational health departments in companies, commercial providers and teams from other areas of the public sector.
Benefits for non-NHS occupational health teams and providers include:
- Provision of quality data for use in tenders to demonstrate customer satisfaction and turnaround times
- Evidence to meet the requirements of SEQQHS to gain accreditation
- Review elements of practice and drive improvement
Cohort and MoHaWK
Cohort software by Medgate UK comes complete with a standard suite of reports which includes the functionality required to meet and maintain MoHaWK guidelines. To ensure control of your data, it is also possible to link the reports to a third party report generator such as Excel or Crystal Reports. Once the report has been designed there is an automatic refresh of data between the two. The reporting module allows for:
- Graphical and professional presentation of reports
- In-depth analysis and identification of data for auditing requirements
- Comparison of trends
- Dynamic linking between report writers
- Creation of bespoke reports, tailored to specific requirements
Hilary Winch, Head of Workplace Health, Safety & well-being for Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital NHS Trust stated;
"Syngentis are really grateful for the support that Medgate UK has given to their users in helping to develop systems that make it easier for services to review their individual performance within the MoHaWK indicators".
Automation in healthcare brings real value
Automation implementation in occupational health and wellness services should be embraced not feared
Automation can eliminate over 70% of the manual activity associated with repetitive administration tasks within your busy occupational health and wellness department, allowing you to focus on the more value added work, is there a reason you would not want to do this? Many organisations are now seeing automation software as a foundation to ensure greater control and efficiency of processes in their service offering; such as appointment booking, management reporting, making recalls and collating patient records.
Using automation to streamline these common tasks allows users to save time by moving away from manually-intensive processes to a more streamlined cost-efficient paperless workflow.
Once implemented, Cohort (Medgate UK’s award winning and leading cloud based solution for occupational health) can be easily accessed by users from any location, without the need for any additional hardware costs.
By using intuitive dashboards and interfaces, Cohort software allows users to automate and manage tasks within a few clicks with full audit control.
Key benefits and features
- Reduction in manual process time
- Paperless workflow
- Greater audit control which allows for compliance with MoHawk and SEQQHS accreditation
- Powerful reporting and information management which allows for greater accuracy with reduced errors
- Software as a service (SaaS) with clear transparent pricing and no hidden costs
Automation in the workplace is designed to enable people to do their job with greater efficiency. The healthcare industry is often met with constraints such as time and tight budgets but choosing the correct software solution for your business will ultimately provide you with a solid return on investment.