The Increasingly Important Role of Technology in Employee and Occupational Health
Recently, the medical director at one of our corporate clients confessed that the pandemic, despite the worldwide havoc it has left in its wake, came with at least the hint of a silver lining. He told me: “I have received more recognition, interest, and support in the last year than in the previous two-plus decades of my occupational health career.”
And for good reason. COVID-19 has a far-reaching organizational impact, especially for human resources teams and employee and occupational health specialists. Marketing teams even scrambled to pivot as well, including our own. Needs changed constantly for our customers as their responsibilities for maintaining the health and safety of their workforces seemed to shift every single day.
How would they transition seamlessly to remote working conditions and still maintain a focus on their employees’ health? How would their on-site clinics continue to handle employee illnesses and injuries? What new policies would their human resources departments have to implement as a result of the pandemic? These questions were only the tip of the iceberg.
Needless to say, the pandemic forced C-suites all over the globe to see the work their companies do from a very different perspective – How can their companies do the work that others depend upon if their employees are not fully present, productive and healthy?
The Integrated Benefits Institute estimates that health-related work absences cost U.S. businesses nearly $530 billion each year in lost productivity, and that figure does not account for a once-in-a-century pandemic. And while electronic health records have become increasingly common at many large corporations for tracking and managing employee health, many organizations still rely on spreadsheets, multiple home-grown databases and even paper filing systems, making it immensely cumbersome and difficult to support compliance requirements and healthy workforce initiatives, especially when health and safety procedures are rapidly changing, and more and more employees are working remotely.
Without the right digital infrastructure in place, managing employee and occupational health is tough enough, but to not have the proper technology during a pandemic makes the process nearly impossible. A robust occupational health IT infrastructure that consolidates compliance and safety, employee engagement, and clinical care on a single, certified, interoperable cloud-based EHR platform has now become one of the most critical elements that companies must adopt moving forward. Software needs to be both scalable and customizable, as well as fully interoperable with corporate HR systems, e-mail applications, insurance carriers, and immunization registries. As with most IT-based solutions, the goal is to streamline and simplify all of these processes.
Technology that features multiple and differentiated points of access – including separate employee and employer interfaces – will become valuable for consistent and accurate medical surveillance and compliance while also allowing employees to engage in company wellness initiatives and connect with primary care clinical staff more easily if required.
Perhaps it goes without saying, but occupational and employee health software must also now be fine-tuned to support pandemic response. At Enterprise Health, we worked with one of our health system clients several years ago to build out pandemic response functionality as they were involved in managing the last Ebola outbreak. When COVID-19 struck, we were able to rapidly modify that functionality to support COVID-specific requirements. We also moved quickly to leverage existing modules including employee engagement, case management, vaccine management, encounter documentation, and reporting to aid our clients with their COVID workflows.
In addition to functionality, it is imperative for healthcare software vendors to adopt and maintain a more agile footing. We were able to refine and launch telehealth capabilities, contact tracing, and new mass immunization capabilities in days, as client needs all but dictated a higher level of urgency, quick response, and adjustment given the uncertainty and ever-changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is imperative that occupational and employee health software deliver on both compliance and clinical capabilities so that as policies and protocols change within organizations – sometimes very rapidly – implementation is swift and uncomplicated, even for large corporations with tens of thousands of employees. The pandemic has also shined a light on the occupational and employee health needs of many small and midsize businesses (SMBs), which are also struggling to manage workforce health. In addition to supporting our larger clients, we also have a scaled back version of our software designed to support SMB needs.
COVID underscores the critical nature of not only having healthy employees but also having the technology infrastructure in place to help keep them as safe and healthy as possible when the world turns upside down like it did early last year. Health IT plays a crucial role in managing a comprehensive and successful employee and occupational health and safety program.
About the Author
Jeff Donnell is the President of Enterprise Health, developer of the only healthcare IT solution that combines occupational health and compliance, employee engagement and clinical care on a single, certified, interoperable cloud-based EHR platform. Notable customers include Chevron, JP Morgan Chase, Eli Lilly, and Northwell Health.