Advice for Employers

We want to ensure yourselves and your employee receive the maximum benefit from the services we supply to you and, therefore, ask you to read this short guide before completing the referral.

Employee Consent

It is recommended as best practice that there should be ‘No Surprises’ throughout the delivery of our services. By this we mean the employee should be fully aware of; –

• Why you are referring them for the service
• What the information you are requesting will be used for
• The people that will see any information we supply to you

It is not compulsory but advised as best practice for you to gain consent from the employee.  Verbal consent is fully acceptable though written is considered preferable.   It is also recommended that you advise the employee of the implications of not consenting i.e. we would not continue with assessment so the employer would act on the facts they were in possession of.

Late attendance – please advise the employee to arrive early, as late attendance is likely to result in having to return at full cost to complete the assessment and report.

Referral Information

The quality of each service is highly dependent on ensuring we gain all the required information on the referral form.  We therefore kindly ask if you could fully and accurately complete the referral form.   Please note that we are only able to address areas of the body indicated on the referral form, so please document all areas which need to be addressed.

Return of reports

We will inform you if there will be any delay and the reason for this, which may be due to inadequate referral information, the patient arriving too late to complete the assessment or that the assessment was highly complex.

The overwhelming majority of reports will be returned within a maximum of three working days unless the employee wishes to see the report before it is sent. In these cases, in line with GDPR, it will be extended by two working days if the report is sent via email and five working days if posted to allow enough time for the employee to reply. Please note that the employee has the option to withdraw consent at any time.

Occupational Rehabilitation reports are usually returned much quicker and manufacturing assessments usually take a little longer than these timescales.

Regarding Functional Capacity Evaluation (assessing fitness for work) & Manual Handling Workplace Assessments.

Medication – We ask that you inform the employee it is recommended if possible that we carry out the assessment without the use of any short-term pain-relieving medication.  The employee should continue with any long-term prescribed medication.

Consent – It is recommended that for these services you advise the employee of the further possible implications of not consenting i.e. the employee would have to justify not consenting if taken to tribunal.

Disability information – defined as a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial long-term adverse effect (at least a year) on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.  We cannot give you a decision regarding disability as this is a legal decision, we can advise on an impairment, how long it is likely to last and the effect on daily activity which will aid this legal decision.