Workplace Health Connections

Today is the Society of Occupational Medicine's annual conference and president Dr Gordon Parker has stated that occupational health services  should be free at the point of delivery in the NHS. The call comes in the week the NHS celebrates its 60^th birthday and the day after Lord Darzi announced his proposals for the future of the NHS. I would like to support the SOM's aims but  they do raise a few complicated questions.

There is the question of who is going to provide these OH services. The SOM seems to be fixated on OH doctors and nurses doing it but in reality there are never going to be enough available and a lot of the services are not of a primarily clinical nature in any case, for example "benefits advisers and others associated with workplace wellbeing" to quote the SOM.  There are also case managers, disability assessors and a range of other services which are unlikely to be provided by doctors or nurses. 

 Will NHS Trusts be willing to use NHS funding to provide services which are not 'clinical'? It all boils down to the cost benefit case. In an apparently under-funded service where rationing is the norm, could we, to give one example, demonstrate that return to work through psychological therapies would save a fortune on anti-depression prescription drugs? If we save millions on incapacity benefit can that then be reinvested in improving NHS services? Over to you, Lord Darzi.  

For the time being it is safe to assume that employers will be footing the bill for OH for some time to come.