Six companies and organisations have won the first ever awards for achieving high standards in occupational health services. The companies and organisations have met the accreditation standards of SEQOHS - Safe Effective Quality Occupational Health Service, run by the Royal College of Physicians on behalf of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine. By meeting these standards, they have shown that they are able to maintain and improve the quality of people’s health while in work.
SEQOHS aims to:
- enable services to identify the standards of practice to which they should aspire
- credit good work being done by high quality occupational health services, providing independent validation that they satisfy standards of quality
- raise standards where they need to be raised
- help purchasers differentiate occupational health services that attain the desired standards from those that do not.
To be accredited by SEQOHS, an occupational health service must follow an on-going annual programme of quality improvement, accreditation and maintenance.
The awards ceremony will take place at 11.00am on Tuesday 12 July 2011 at the Royal College of Physicians. Dame Carol Black, National Director for Health and Work, will present the awards, which will be attended by key opinion formers in the employment and HR fields.
The first six companies and organisations receiving the awards are:
- Healthwork Ltd Manchester
- RPS Mansfield Nottinghamshire
- OHC Consultancy Ltd Halesowen West Midlands
- Working Fit Ltd Dover
- Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
- Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospital
Dr Olivia Carlton, president of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine, said:
It is a major step forward to have occupational health services accredited for the first time. This is very good news for the health of the working age population. SEQOHS has been well received by the occupational health community and it has the potential to make a real difference to the quality of services. The Faculty of Occupational Medicine is proud of this achievement and my thanks go to Paul Nicholson who has led the development of the scheme and to the SEQOHS team at RCP who have done an excellent job.
For further information, please contact Linda Cuthbertson, head of PR, on +44 (0)203 075 1254 / 0774 877 7919, or email Linda.Cuthbertson@rcplondon.ac.uk