Commissioning Occupational Health services

NHS Employers has published two pieces of guidance (updated 2013), Commissioning OH Services and Your Occupational Health Service, to assist occupational health leaders, HR directors and boards in commissioning OH services and understanding what commissioned OH services should be delivering for their organisation.

Your Occupational Health Service aims to ensure that NHS organisations are clear about what to expect from their OH service. It also provides guidance on how to monitor that service, and what to do with the information to ensure the service delivers the best support to staff.

Commissioning Occupational Health Services will support commissioning teams in procuring services from multi-disciplinary occupational health providers that offer a range of skills and expertise.

These two documents support the consolidation of occupational health services agenda.

There is now a growing body of evidence and compelling clinical governance and economic arguments that suggest that to provide excellent occupational health services to NHS staff units will need to serve a staff population of 10,000 or above.

NHS Health at Work Network’s ‘Short guide to Consolidation of NHS Occupational Health Services’ sets out the case for change, describes two models of future delivery, provides case studies and outlines the next steps for occupational health leaders and HR Directors.

Service Level Agreement Template

NHS Health at Work has launched a SLA template, which can be adapted locally for occupational health units to use with their providers. The template is currently undergoing quality assurance for inclusion on the Safe Effective Quality Occupational Health Service (SEQOHS) Knowledge Management System.

A copy of the template is available here.

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