Health surveillance

Health Surveillance pursuant to the Consolidated Law on Health and Safety at Work, Legislative Decree 81/08, is defined as the set of medical actions, aimed at protecting the health and safety of workers, in relation to the work environment, professional risk factors and how work activities are carried out.

Occupational Medicine, as we know, is mandatory for all companies in any product sector with at least one employee: it is the Consolidated Law itself that indicates this obligation, regardless of the number of workers.

The three main purposes of Occupational Medicine are:

To maintain and promote the health of workers, to support work capacity;
The continuous improvement of the work environment and tasks, to make everything compatible with health and safety requirements;
The creation of a work culture with a view to a safe and healthy environment, favouring a positive and harmonious social context, to improve the productivity of the company.

All this translates into integrated personnel management systems, into favouring the participation of workers in the life of the company, both in training and quality management policies.

Companies are obliged to appoint an OH physician, a professional figure in charge of implementing Health Surveillance for companies. This role can be performed primarily by Occupational Medicine specialists, but also by specialists in Hygiene and Preventive Medicine and/or Forensic Medicine and Insurance, who must have completed and passed a specific post-specialisation course. Like other doctors, OH physicians are registered in the medical Register and are included in the public lists of OH physicians of the Ministry of Health.

This professional is the main contact for different figures in the company, starting from employees and including the employer and company roles with a focus on prevention and safety (PPSM, WSR, Travel Manager, HSE Manager, etc.).

It is the duty of the OH physician to certify a subject is fit for a specific task, analysing risk situations, related to the presence of occupational diseases, alcohol and drug abuse, the clinical and genetic history of the user but also of family members.

An OH physician aims for the physical well-being of the staff and for healthy working spaces: formerly limited to the physical-health evaluation of workers, OH physicians are now involved from the beginning of the internal company prevention process, alongside the employer and company figures in charge.

Here are some of the obligations governed by art. 25 of Legislative Decree. 81/08:

to collaborate with the employer and with the company prevention and protection service in assessing the risks for the health and safety of workers by actively participating in the drafting of the RAD (risk assessment document);
to visit the workplace at least once a year;
to prepare the health protocols that establish, after the risk assessment of each individual job, the frequency of clinical visits and the type of health checks to be carried out to verify the worker's fitness for work;

to annually send to INAIL an anonymous collective report on the staff’s overall state of health;
to maintain relations with the Territorial Bodies;
if the company has more than 15 employees, to participate in the Annual Periodic Meeting called by the Employer.

Ambimed is at the forefront in the development of new IT processes that can simplify the activities of company figures: thanks to its Occupational Medicine Software procedures and planning have all been digitised, allowing quick, easy and secure access to company information. All paper medical records have become digital..

This allows our company, in line with what is required by health and legislative regulations and according to customer needs, to offer Occupational Medicine and Business Travel Medicine services throughout Italy by offering the services of the best OH physicians on the basis of the specific needs of the companies that rely on us, guaranteeing a truly tailored service.