Here are a few of the commonest queries new clients want to know. If you can't find the answer to your query here, please email it to; enquiries@lifelineoh.co.uk.

  1. My company has employed its own nurse for many years and is very happy with her, but we would like to use Lifeline for doctor advice and reports. Is this possible?
    Yes. Lifeline is more than happy to work with any OH professionals you have in place already, whether employed, self-employed or other External OH Providers.
  2. Our employed OH nurse does not have any back up currently and is concerned about Clinical Governance. What is that can you provide it?
    Clinical governance is the ongoing quality management of health professionals, involving audit, appraisal, support and back-up, training needs assessment and training provision. It is one area company-employed nurses often lack, which can leave them feeling very isolated. Lifeline can provide Clinical Governance for your nurse, and even though you continue to employ her, we provide her with back-up of our systems and procedures whilst your company gets the reassurance that your nurse has proper ongoing training, supervision and help when needed. Call us for further details.
  3. We are happy with our nurse but instead of employer her, we would like to look at contracting out the OH provision to Lifeline. Is this possible and if so, would Lifeline will able and willing to employee our nurse and continue providing us with her services.
    This is usually no problem. We have to examine her existing terms and conditions to ensure that, under TUPE, we were able to at least maintain her current position.
  4. Our company already has an external provider. Would Lifeline be able to help with difficult individual cases and how do we go about referring cases?
    Yes indeed. Simply refer cases in the usual way, on one of our referral forms and post it or fax it.

Individual Employee Referrals

  1. Can we e-mail referrals to you?
    Yes, but please call us and liase with your IT department as the Data Protection Act requires you to transmit personal information very carefully. We recommend 128-bit encryption of the whole email and its attachments and give us a password (decryption key) in another communication eg phone call, fax.
  2. Where do the doctor medicals take place?
    These can be at our central consulting rooms, at your company premises, at your employee's home or a telephone consultation.
  3. How effective are telephone consultations and what are the benefits?
    Very effective. In our experience, at least 80% of OH consulting can be done effectively by phone. Examples include depression, anxiety and other mental health problems, cardiac problems, lung, kidney and neurological problems. Even most musculo-ligamentous problems can be dealt with by phone, especially if resolving and especially in the first instance. See the Telephone Hotline section
  4. Our company risk assessment show we have problems with noise and vibration and that we need to introduce health screening. We´re worried that this will open the floodgates for claims. Is this justified?
    This is a common concern. Firstly, if you have a problem with raised noise levels, you have to by law reduce levels as far as possie and if still too, do appropriate health checks to ensure workers' hearing levels are not worsening. Not doing it is not an option as you will be in breach of regulations and the SHE take a dim view of failure to act if risk assessments indicate action.
    Secondly, you may as well find problems now and deal with them before the problems worsen further and risk further claims.
    Finally, finding noise-induced deafness does not prove how long someone has had the condition, which usually has occurred many years ago. Consequently, people don't tend to jump on the bandwagon with multiple claims and they're usually more worried about being taken off their job.
  5. We tried health checks before but the workers didn't welcome them and wouldn't attend, worried they might lose their job if a problem was found. Could this happen and how could we reassure them?
    It is common for workers to worry before a program of medicals commences and rare for any concerns to remain after one round. The reason is that workers are quickly reassured that the checks are for their own benefit. It only takes one or satisfied customers for word to get round that these medicals are a good and suspicion is soon replaced by appreciation that the company is trying to help them. The same goes for any other workplace risk factors. Lifeline is happy to visit and meet ith workers and their representatives beforehand to allay their fears. It is not uncommon for an employee to decide in conjunction with ourselves and the company to move to a safer area or to have reasonable adjustments made to help them but extremely rare to have to leave their job against their will as a result of routine health monitoring. In fact, we have never come across a case in the thousands of health checks we have conducted.
  6. Our company have never previously had OH provision. How do we know what we need?
    The two main areas we help with are Absence/Return to work medicals with reports to help Human Resouce managers and Health Surveillance medicals at the request of Health and Safety managers. For the first, the HR managers can probably start with their long-term sick cases and refer them for comprehensive reports to help them rehabilitate back to work. For the second, the medicals are guided by the risk assessments. You can then request an Occupational Health needs assessment, to discuss and decide your requirements and frequency of assessment, usually less common than you'd think.
  7. How easy is it to change health provider to Lifeline?
    Very simple. You could refer ad-hoc cases to us today if you wish. For doctor or nurse sessions at your premises, just check the agreement with your old provider if there is one, to see if a period of notice is required. Two or three months is common, which also gives us time to set things up for you and arrange transfer of your employee health records on an approriate date. We will simply agree a start date with you and get started.
  8. Do we need to get employee or employee representative permission to allow Lifeline access to their records?
    No. Your current provider is the 'Data Controller' under the DPA and simply hands over the job to the New medical provider, including keys to your on-site medical cabinets or, if off-site, the actual cabinets themselves which can be kept at our premises. Keys to medical files should never be held by non-medical company managers, even Health and Safety or Human Resources under the act so don't be surprised if your old provider refuses to hand them to you. Its nothing personal!
  9. Does Lifeline's OH service help bring down absence levels?
    Yes it usually does. In conjunction with a coordinated absence policy involving HR and line management , your OH service will normally have a positive and sometimes dramatic mpact on absence levels. One company recently reduced its absence from 8% to 4% over four months with the introduction of one of our experienced OH Advisors.