Making GP’s your allies
You possibly have more requirements to work with General Practitioners (GPs) or medical advisors than you realise. You need medical certificates when someone is off sick for any length of time; you need someone to undertake medical assessments to check if an employee is (still) able to do particular tasks (either for ongoing H&S controls or on return to work after a layoff); to conduct drug tests; to give positive pre-employment clearance.
Yet, how often do you find that a medical certificate is too vague to be helpful; or a workplace assessment too general to facilitate allocation of tasks? This means further time and requests of the medical officer and no-one wants to waste their time. And how often have you heard excuses for no medical certificate: there were no appointments; or they didn’t have enough money; or I couldn’t get there until the end of the week - so the medical certificate states merely that the employee said they were sick! We hear these excuses often. However, if you ask, they must comply. End of story. Even if the certificate is of no use.
There are other options. A really good one involves having a relationship with a medical centre that understands your needs and is prepared to work with you. They will guarantee appointments made through you and send you the bill.
We have such a relationship set up with Moorhouse Medical which is open to our clients – so that even if you have not organised anything for yourself and find you need some help, you can get your employee an appointment, using our arrangement, and we can either send you the bill or your employee can pay at the time (whatever is appropriate in the situation). Moorhouse Medical also has a Business Health clinic that can provide a number of great services including:
- Pre-employment medicals
- Fitness tests for H& S purposes
- Drug testing
- Immigration medicals
- Flu vaccinations.
If you are interested in finding out how these services could benefit your company or need help with an errant or sickly employee, please email us for some advice.
And if Moorhouse Medical is too far out of the way for you, why not approach a local medical centre to see if you could start a business relationship with them. We think that having a relationship with a local GP is a smart business idea. It means that if you ever need support for one of your employees (or all). You have a trusted business partner on hand.
How often is a medical certificate too vague, or a workplace assessment too general to be helpful? How often have you heard excuses for no medical certificate? We have a relationship with a medical centre that makes these things positive.