Latest / The SOM Podcast / Exploring the Future of Occupational Health

Transcript

Exploring the Future of Occupational Health · The SOM Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This podcast is sponsored by orchid Live. Find out more
• 0:04
  at orchidlive dot com.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: So a big welcome to everybody for this round to
• 0:20
  table discussion on the future of occupational health.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: My name is Amy McEwan.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Now, as many of you know, all of you hopefully know,
• 0:26
  it was the Society of Occupational Medicine's ninetieth anniversary last
• 0:31
  year and the discussion that we had throughout the year
• 0:34
  was what does the future of occupational house look like.
• 0:37
  We've had a few blogs and webinars on that, so
• 0:39
  we thought we would follow this up by this special
• 0:41
  session where we have a broad range of highly experienced
• 0:45
  and senior people to sit and.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: Have a discussion about that.
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: Hi.
• 0:48
  Speaker 5: Everyone, I'm dot Charles Goss, consultant occupational physician and a
• 0:51
  head of service in the NHS Occupational Health Sphere, but
• 0:54
  i also chair the NHS Health at Work Network, which
• 0:58
  is the membership organization re entering NHS occupational health services.
• 1:02
  Speaker 6: Hello, I'm Alistair. I'm a consultant occupational physician and I'm
• 1:06
  the head of Health of Health Partners Group.
• 1:08
  Speaker 7: I am Professor nel Winberg. I'm a consultant occupational psychiatrist
• 1:13
  and currently I'm the president of their Society of Occupational Medicine.
• 1:16
  Speaker 8: Professor Kevin Bampton. I'm the chief executive Officer of the
• 1:20
  British Occupational Hygiene Society, but I'm also the chair for
• 1:24
  the Council for Work and Health that brings together around
• 1:27
  forty organizations to advocate for work and health issues within
• 1:32
  the policy sphere.
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: I'm Rachel saf and I work in the Public Policy
• 1:36
  Team at a CIPT, which is the professional body for
• 1:40
  HR people development.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: And also really relevant with obviously, and I'm sure it'll
• 1:44
  come out you know what's happening with Keep Britain Working
• 1:47
  and how occupational health fits in with that.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: So you can see it's going to be a really
• 1:51
  rich and broad discussion with this.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: So Noil, I'm going to start with you, what do
• 1:55
  you say about the future of occupational health? Where do
• 1:58
  you think it might need to modernize or is it
• 2:00
  good as it is?
• 2:01
  Speaker 7: Thanks very much, Amy, So I'll lead the details of
• 2:04
  occupational health practice to Charles and Alistair, considering that that's
• 2:07
  what they do. But what i will say is from
• 2:09
  the Society's point of view, where we see our value
• 2:13
  and where we see occupational health going is to try
• 2:17
  and make sure that a organizations use it properly, getting
• 2:21
  organizations to get advice from or refer to occupational health
• 2:25
  early on, because one of the challenges is is however
• 2:27
  fantastic an occupational health professional you are. If you get
• 2:31
  someone four months after the problem started and it's entrenched,
• 2:34
  it's incredibly difficult to fix. So we want to get
• 2:38
  people who are going to refer to management referrals to
• 2:41
  come in early, even if sometimes that's only about getting
• 2:43
  advice rather than actually seeing patients.
• 2:45
  Speaker 8: So that's one thing.
• 2:46
  Speaker 7: The second thing is we really want occupational health professionals
• 2:49
  to be part of an organization's strategic direction because if
• 2:53
  an organization is interested in their staff, they're going to
• 2:57
  want to make sure they're healthy, and of course they've
• 2:59
  got occupational health professionals as part of the organization. So
• 3:02
  even if they're not going to sit on the board,
• 3:04
  which I think would be lovely if they would, they
• 3:07
  should absolutely be advising the board about strategic directions in
• 3:11
  terms of workplace health. And I think the last thing,
• 3:13
  and it kind of touches on what you asked, is
• 3:15
  the interplay between well being and health, and I think
• 3:18
  this is a potentially complex area. Is the Society is
• 3:22
  setting up quality mark for organizations that provide well being services.
• 3:27
  The wellbeing space out there with mindfulnesses and yogas and
• 3:31
  all these other interesting interventions. It's a busy area at times.
• 3:36
  It's been described a bit like the wild West, and
• 3:38
  so what we really want is to try and bring
• 3:40
  an element of standard setting and similarity. A very last
• 3:45
  point or touch on the oh, workforce needs to be
• 3:48
  good for the task ahead of it. So we're setting
• 3:51
  up a competency development program so that those diplomats can
• 3:55
  build up their skills and their competency so they can
• 3:58
  add usefully to the whole of aage practice.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: What about the future of occupational health? There is a specialty.
• 4:04
  Should we need to change what occupational health delivers as
• 4:07
  a specialty to adapt a workplace issue as well?
• 4:10
  Speaker 7: I think in short, and it might sound dinosaur like, no,
• 4:13
  it's really clear that organizations need healthy workforces so that
• 4:18
  they are productive and also that they meet their legal
• 4:20
  obligations and they attract good staff. So I think occupational
• 4:24
  health professionals are right at the heart of that. And
• 4:26
  one of the things I think many of us in
• 4:28
  OH kind of scratch our head about is we know
• 4:31
  what we deliver is good and useful and helps organizations
• 4:35
  do well. It just difficult to understand sometimes why organizations
• 4:39
  won't take that up. You know, if I said to
• 4:41
  an organization, do you want to improve your productivity by
• 4:43
  ten percent? I'm sure most of them would say yes.
• 4:46
  I think we should not just keep doing the same.
• 4:48
  We need to modernize. We need to use different AI
• 4:52
  and new diagnostic techniques and new and use new approaches,
• 4:56
  new evidence. But the basic core of keeping people healthy
• 5:00
  at work and optimizing their ability to deliver well. I
• 5:04
  think that those are core OHE skills and they should continue.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Charles, you are vigorously nodding during most.
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: Of thanks Amy very Quine. Occupational health was left out
• 5:14
  of the NHS back in nineteen forty eight. It has
• 5:17
  never been properly, in my view, legislated for under the
• 5:21
  umbrella of health and safety, and that means to this
• 5:24
  day it is still widely misunderstood. But you can't have
• 5:27
  a successful working relationship with your employer if they don't
• 5:31
  really understand what occupational health is. And so if you're
• 5:34
  inviting occupational health in to have discussions, by the time
• 5:37
  someone has already become Unwell, you've missed the whole point
• 5:40
  of what we're supposed to be achieving. Occupational health needs
• 5:43
  to take an opportunity to reposition itself as being a
• 5:47
  key stakeholder in workforce sustainability, supporting managers earlier on using
• 5:54
  data intelligently, getting in there at board level and at
• 5:57
  whatever strategic level we need to think about, particularly in
• 5:59
  the NH setting, and we can't have a happy, healthy
• 6:02
  working relationship between occupacial health and all those are the
• 6:04
  key stakeholders unless we really get that representation a board
• 6:07
  that we need and we have absolute clarity of understanding
• 6:10
  and purpose.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: You mentioned the word and the reason why we're here
• 6:12
  today is to talk about the future modernization.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: What do you see modernization being.
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: Well, we're stuck in a medical model, aren't we. I
• 6:19
  think that's the first thing to say is as occupational
• 6:21
  health professionals, a lot of us are from a medical
• 6:23
  and nursing background, but the adage is not everybody with
• 6:26
  a headache needs to see a neurologist, but some people do,
• 6:30
  and we have our role as qualified occupational health professionals.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: Rachel.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: From where you sit within the workplace, what would you
• 6:36
  like to see out of a sort of evolving specialty.
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: The potential for occupational health to really change society and
• 6:45
  the quality of people's lives beyond their work in life
• 6:49
  is enormous, and I'm thinking about occupational health in its
• 6:53
  broadest sense, yes, occupational medicine, occupational health as a specialty.
• 6:59
  Within that, I'm thinking of occupational health in the sense
• 7:02
  of the health of the working age population. And I
• 7:06
  think the key Britain work in review has first of all,
• 7:09
  really shone a light on what the missed opportunity an
• 7:14
  opportunity there still is in terms of improving health amongst
• 7:18
  working age people. But it has also I think served
• 7:22
  to galvanize people in this space to make a difference.
• 7:26
  But I think we've got to bring it down if
• 7:28
  we're going to think about the difference it's going to
• 7:30
  make in society occupational health to people's lives, and I
• 7:33
  think we've got to think about, well, what does that
• 7:35
  at an individual at a community level, And then I
• 7:38
  think it becomes more real when we start to think
• 7:40
  about it in terms of the three million that aren't
• 7:43
  in work because of ill health. Not all those want
• 7:45
  to work or can work, but there are definitely a
• 7:49
  couple of million who would really like to work, not
• 7:51
  just because of the financial award obviously very important, and
• 7:55
  the impact that can have in communities and society is
• 7:57
  obviously tremendous, but also the meaning and social connection and
• 8:02
  purpose that work can bring to people's lives. And I
• 8:07
  think it becomes even more real when within that section
• 8:12
  of society we think about what is happening with our
• 8:15
  young people today, their ability to access work even in
• 8:20
  the first place, and the worrying disproportionate reported level of
• 8:26
  mental ill health amongst that group. This is literally our future.
• 8:30
  So we're going to talk about the future of occupational
• 8:33
  health and society, then we've got to think about our
• 8:36
  young people. And then if we just turn our thoughts
• 8:39
  to those already in work, a what a difference it
• 8:43
  could make to those already in work but who are
• 8:47
  contemplating leaving work or have already left work due to
• 8:52
  a lack of support. Effect of occupational health in its
• 8:55
  broader sense, because obviously we know that many many people
• 9:00
  or don't have access to occupational health as a clinical service,
• 9:04
  and some do very much need it, of course, so
• 9:08
  I think nothing shines a light on that as well
• 9:11
  as perhaps the situation we've got with women's in reprotective
• 9:15
  health at work at the CIPD, we've carried out a
• 9:19
  number of different research studies among people with lived experience
• 9:23
  of health issues such as menopause, menstrual health, fertility challenges, pregnancy,
• 9:31
  baby loss, and it has really hit home what a
• 9:36
  lack of support in terms of health support can mean
• 9:41
  to someone's career ability to carry on work in It's
• 9:44
  really really stark, and just also the kind of heartbreaking
• 9:48
  stories that you get back in that box where you
• 9:52
  say any other comments, and I mean just really heartbreaking
• 9:56
  some of the stories that people talk about in terms
• 9:59
  of not being able to participate in work anymore and
• 10:03
  how to step back. And what's also come through in
• 10:06
  our research without fail across so many different areas of health,
• 10:10
  is the difference it makes two people at work if
• 10:14
  they do have a supportive employer that will provide that
• 10:19
  specialist occupational health support where needed. But we also lean
• 10:24
  need line managers who are competent and skilled and know
• 10:28
  how to discuss and implement effective adjustments and so on.
• 10:32
  But there's a cultural piece as well. I think it's
• 10:34
  very important that occupational health if it's going to make
• 10:37
  that real change in society and have that impact. It
• 10:40
  has to be really holistic and provide support in a
• 10:44
  preventative sense, but also for people as experience different health
• 10:49
  and well being challenges through the life course, because we
• 10:53
  can all experience those at certain stages or at any
• 10:57
  stage as well. I'm thinking bereavement, suicide.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: What you've said, which I think you know the future
• 11:02
  for you is holistic occupational health, preventative, providing different support across.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: The life course for different needs.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: And I think that's that's a really good kind of
• 11:14
  summary for the future. Really, like, if we can build
• 11:17
  occupational health that does that, then we've done it. Alistair,
• 11:20
  We've seen change in the occupational health private sector in
• 11:23
  the last few years, but most provisions, especially since the Medigolds.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: Sale, is two big providers.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Where do you see in this broader conversation about the
• 11:30
  future of occupational health and how we can broaden out
• 11:34
  the role of a private provider.
• 11:36
  Speaker 6: In that I think you're absolutely right. What we're seeing
• 11:38
  is consolidation of the marketplace. At the moment. Procurement has
• 11:40
  changed everything. In the old days, we would sell to
• 11:43
  HR director's chief financial officers CEOs and they bought what
• 11:48
  they thought in discussion and collaboration was the right thing
• 11:52
  for their businesses. We are now procured like computers, major vehicles,
• 11:56
  other services, and that intelligence of procurement is very different.
• 12:01
  I do see clients as being the main drivers. Have
• 12:03
  change here over and above everything else that government is
• 12:06
  doing or not doing. I think employers want a single supplier.
• 12:09
  They want a single data set. They want that data
• 12:12
  interpreted intelligently so that they can tell the health of
• 12:16
  the nation, their nation. Because the marketplace is very competitive.
• 12:20
  They want to know how they compare against their peers
• 12:24
  and how they can be better. And when I say better,
• 12:26
  you know they do acknowledge having a healthy, stable, engage
• 12:29
  workforce will providing all other things equal, deliver higher profitability
• 12:34
  to shareholders. We have to be very clear what it
• 12:37
  is that we're doing where we add value. I think
• 12:39
  there will always be clinical need. But of course what
• 12:42
  we do see is as we age an increasing burden
• 12:45
  of ill health and people living with multiple health risk factors,
• 12:49
  and that does need clinical input in order to optimize that.
• 12:52
  So I think the model is one of a single provider.
• 12:55
  We call ourselves a corporate healthcare solutions business. I think
• 12:59
  occupational men and is the fundamental heartbeat of that. But
• 13:03
  we are a healthcare solutions provider, So those are my
• 13:07
  general thoughts in terms of what the marketplace will look
• 13:09
  like over the next few years. With AI is an
• 13:13
  integral part of it, It's a threat and a massive
• 13:15
  opportunity for us. I think we need to have much
• 13:18
  clearer engagement with the NHS in terms of treatment workers
• 13:22
  who contribute to the economy. There should be care pathways
• 13:26
  for the things that they need using the NHS so
• 13:30
  that they can return to work. Obviously, some organizations get
• 13:33
  fed up with that and they move to funding that privately,
• 13:36
  but not everybody, and certainly in the SME market that
• 13:39
  really doesn't exist. And we need to cascade what we
• 13:42
  do well into the fifty percent of workers in the
• 13:46
  UK who have no access to OH at all by
• 13:49
  providing the right services at the right price that's deliverable
• 13:52
  and easy to access. I think the future is bright
• 13:56
  and I'm going to stop there. There's lots to do,
• 13:57
  but I think the future is right.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Kevin, you down to talk about you know, your thoughts
• 14:02
  about this, but also especially if we're looking at other
• 14:05
  models from the pure medical one, what that might present
• 14:08
  for regulators.
• 14:09
  Speaker 8: Currently keep Britain working is you know, it's as much
• 14:14
  as a symptom of regulator frustration as anything. Just basically
• 14:19
  there is this kind of governmental frustration which has been
• 14:23
  expressed to me in a very simple terms. If you've
• 14:26
  got one point eight million people who are being made
• 14:29
  ill through work one point nine who can't work, then
• 14:33
  what on earth has gone wrong with occupation or health?
• 14:37
  What we will see is the continued battle between Department
• 14:41
  of Work and Pensions HC and Department of Business and
• 14:45
  Trade trying to square the circle about how you get
• 14:48
  people working but don't break them even more before returning
• 14:53
  them to the NHS. So the sustainability that Charles talks
• 14:57
  about is right at the core of this. Our challenge,
• 15:01
  if you like, as professionals is to maintain those professional standards,
• 15:07
  not lose the link with the clinical leadership, to make
• 15:11
  sure what we don't end up with is bypassing clinical standards.
• 15:16
  But also that big education piece about what is it
• 15:20
  that workplaces need to know and understand to be intelligent consumers.
• 15:26
  We need to make it a lot easier to understand
• 15:30
  what occupational health professions provide, what the value is, how
• 15:35
  that works and to sort of try and have a
• 15:39
  bit more collective influence on the market, because otherwise the
• 15:43
  market will be just driven by what people think they need.
• 15:47
  What people will see is the most instrumentally valuable or
• 15:52
  the most fashionable, and fashion is very very strong. This
• 15:56
  is why Some's intervention in terms of helping to go
• 16:00
  either well being industry is really really important. Just because
• 16:03
  it sounds good and everybody loves it doesn't mean it's
• 16:06
  your wisest use of resources and impacting things and the
• 16:12
  final thing, and you know, it's great that Alistair's here.
• 16:15
  The integration between sort of true primary prevention what we
• 16:19
  call occupational hygiene, so getting the workplace to be a
• 16:23
  healthy environment, and then primary prevention in terms of that
• 16:28
  early intervention diagnosis, that's really important, that wrap around product
• 16:33
  which goes into the process the environment within which people
• 16:38
  are working, not just dealing with it as a non
• 16:41
  demand service. Once your HR function has identified there's a problem.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've spent a lot of time either procuring
• 16:48
  or helping to procure not just occupation or health, but
• 16:51
  other well being type products. The challenge is is that
• 16:54
  you've often got HR trying to procure occupational health and
• 16:57
  the benefits and reward team procuring other ones, management of
• 17:01
  those providers sit elsewhere, and my experiences is very well,
• 17:05
  zero clinical knowledge in an organization, so people are moddeling
• 17:10
  through with procurement and benefits and the conversation becomes about
• 17:13
  excesses and how much a report costs.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: Not the clinical value. So really helpful, Charles.
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks Aby. My hope really is for the future
• 17:22
  of occupational health that we're going to see it delivered
• 17:24
  in a more broader way, not narrower. Still going to
• 17:28
  have a clinical focus and clinical credibility has got to
• 17:31
  be retained. We've got that multi disciplinary aspect that we've
• 17:34
  talked about. It's going to have better digital support and
• 17:37
  be closer to the realities of work. I mean in
• 17:40
  the NHS, we need to see this being treated as
• 17:43
  a core workforce infrastructure problem so that the NHS staff
• 17:47
  who are happy, healthy and better able to do their
• 17:50
  jobs deliver better care, They can address the waiting lists
• 17:52
  and they can do their job that they need to
• 17:55
  so importantly do. And across society, it means from an
• 17:58
  employment perspective to move away from this culture of certifying
• 18:02
  absence and then saying goodbye to people from the workforce
• 18:07
  and moving to designing a system that enables workforce participation
• 18:11
  throughout the working life cycle. Like Rachel said, and that's.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: A brilliant sentence, designing a system force participation across a
• 18:18
  life cycle.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: Brilliant. Thank you, Kevin, A sentence please.
• 18:21
  Speaker 8: From the h perspective, we need to be thinking in
• 18:25
  a more business light way, in the sense that the
• 18:28
  employer doesn't want a set of complex products that they've
• 18:31
  got to nip together. They just want to have a
• 18:34
  service which enables them to operate effectively and well so
• 18:40
  that their teams can do the job, whether it's single
• 18:43
  provider or a network of people who work together, so
• 18:46
  that the end point is easy for the employer to
• 18:51
  deal with. They don't have to buy multiple different services.
• 18:55
  Speaker 7: At this moment in time, it's pretty obvious that our
• 18:57
  government is extraordinarily keen to keep people working and get.
• 19:01
  Speaker 8: Them back to work. The solution lies with occupational health.
• 19:04
  Speaker 7: We all know that, and so we need to bang
• 19:06
  that drum for via better evidence to make our message clear.
• 19:11
  And I agree with Alastair, the future is certainly bright.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: This podcast is sponsored by Orchid Live. Orchid Live is
• 19:26
  a specialist Occupational Health software used by a number of
• 19:30
  some members to run every aspect of their occupational health operations.
• 19:34
  They hold healthcare records for over one million UK workers
• 19:38
  and work with both in house OH teams and OH providers.
• 19:43
  You can find out more at orchidlive dot com