Sustainability & Risk / Health & Safety / Background Data

Defining Medical Monitoring Requirements

The safety manager may need to track and report on medical monitoring required for employees, whether this be routine-monitoring or accident-related. For example:

• A particular position within the company (work category) might require that employees in this category have a yearly physical, hearing test, or eye examination.
• An employee may have a specific medical condition that you want to monitor in order to ensure that they can perform their job. For example, the employee's work category does not require a yearly physical; however, since an employee suffers from hearing loss, you want to check their hearing every 6 months to ensure that it has not worsened to the point that it affects their safety on the job.
• A workplace mishap (an incident) may occur which affects an employee's health, and you need to monitor the employee's physical condition. The employee may be prohibited from returning to the same job until the condition is cleared, or you may need to track the medical condition in preparation for disability claims. In this example, your categories may be general, such as "Clearance to Work Exam" or "Worker's Compensation Exam."

As part of defining your background data, you must enter the categories of medical monitoring events (eye exams, urine tests, physicals, follow-up exams, etc.) that occur at your site. Once these categories are defined, a safety manager can assign them to specific employees or work categories as routine practices, or as follow-up actions to workplace incidents. Thus, you will need to provide a complete list of the types of events that occur at your site and their various schedules. For example, some jobs may require annual physicals, where as other jobs require them semi-annually. Thus, you could set up two records with a Monitoring Type of Routine, one with a yearly recurring schedule, and the other with a semi-annual recurring schedule.

1. Select the Background Data / Define Medical Monitoring task.
2. Previously defined monitoring items are listed.
3. To add a new medical monitoring category, click Add New and complete these fields:

   Monitoring Type	Choose a value from the drop-down list to indicate if this item is routine, equipment-related, incident-related, or PPE-related. Note that only Monitoring Codes whose Monitoring Type is Incident-Related will appear to the user when associating medical monitoring events with workplace incidents using the Track Incident / Incident Response tab or theTrack Employee Medical Monitoring task.
   Medical Monitoring Description	Enter a description of this medical monitoring category. For example, you can list a routine eye examine and enter a description of the exact items to check.
   Is Renewal Required?	If monitoring must take place again after a specific time period, set this to Yes. For example, if a yearly eye exam is required, enter Yes. Once you set this option to Yes, the system displays additional fields for defining the recurring pattern. For example, if the category requires a yearly eye exam, you can specify this as a yearly event and indicate the month it should occur. For information on using the Archibus recurring schedule tool, see Defining a Recurring Schedule and Scheduling (Concept). If this is a one-time event that typically does not need to be scheduled again in the future, set this option to No. For each requirement, you can individually set a date that the event should occur. For example, suppose each employee, regardless of position, requires a thorough medical exam after being hired; subsequent medical monitoring depends on their specific position in the company. You might set up a category for "Initial Hire Medical Exam." For each new hire, you can create this medical monitoring event and enter the date that the medical exam is to occur. Then, depending on the employee's position, you can assign the required routine exams that take place according to recurring schedules.
   Date Recurrence Ends	If needed, enter the date by which you want the recurring pattern to end. For information, see Scheduling (Concept).
   Monitoring Code	The system will automatically assign a numeric value when you save the record.

4. Click Save at the top of the form to save your record.

Note: If the NotifyMedicalMonitoring parameter is set to YES using the Background Data / Define Application Parameters task, the employee will be sent email to remind them that medical monitoring is scheduled.

Note: You may want to associate with this medical monitoring a related document, such as a medical exam check list. To do so, add the document to the document library and complete the Related Medical Monitoring field. For information, see Manage Document Library.