GETTING RECOGNISED: SEQOHS ACCREDITATION Why should an Occupational Health provider choose to become a SEQOHS accredited service? Written by Victoria Tait
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EQOHS accreditation is a recognised badge of quality in occupational health service. It provides an independent, impartial recognition and an external validation that the service provider has objectively demonstrated their competence and met the required standards. It develops costeffective management guidelines and standardised care and identifies good practice so that it may be furthered and built upon and identifies sub-optimal practice so that it may be improved. It provides a robust governance framework built on best practice and a standard for all OH services to work towards to improve consistency across occupational health services for workers. The process towards accreditation, like ISO 9001, encourages a company to build a quality management system, to risk assess and gather workload data systematically to inform optimal use of resources. It establishes evidence-based local referral guidelines and indications for referral and informs efforts by workers to get the local services workers require. Five years ago most large contracts and principal contractors insisted that Occupational Health providers were SEQOHS accredited if working in the construction industry. The SEQOHS standards were crucial for good researchand evidence-based practices, without it the worker is less protected. However, come 2021, we are seeing this trend changing. There are currently, as of Feb 2021, 183 accredited services and 135 working towards accreditation compared to back in April 2017, 212 services
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OH TODAY Spring 2021
working towards accreditation and 242 services accredited. The numbers show over a 30% drop in interest. Most services in the “system” are NHS foundation trusts, Councils and Private Sector OH providers. There are a few inhouse service providers but generally inhouse occupational health services struggle to justify the expense to their senior management team. They do not sell to anyone else so why should they pay for SEQOHS accreditation to set their own comparable standards and audit compliance when there is often a service specific framework they may also need to adopt, such as Oscar Kilo, the National Police Wellbeing Service framework launched in 2017 used by policing forces and organisations and Fire and Rescue Services across the whole of the UK to audit and benchmark themselves as an organisation. That said, inhouse OH services within Transport for London, University of Glasgow and Walkers Snack Foods Ltd, for example, have seen the benefits to being SEQOHS accredited along with some Police and Fires Services where their senior management are very pro SEQOHS. The teams have found it an excellent experience to document their processes (whether that be as a formal document or as a process flow chart) or identify gaps in their processes and existing services so that they may be remedied as well as identifying the staff and other resources required to deliver an effective consistent service. It has been beneficial in ensuring clinical governance, competency, for driving audit, and identifying areas for clinical