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01 Jun 2017
by David Walsh

David Walsh: Health and wellbeing at DHU Health Care

With 1,350 employees including salaried GPs, community district nurses and clinical pharmacists, health and wellbeing is at the centre of DHU Health Care CIC’s offering in the East Midlands.

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It’s also increasingly important to the HR strategy of our business as we strive to improve the health and attendance of staff and offer benefits that will increase employee engagement.

Around 140 million working days are lost in the UK each year because of sickness and 300,000 employees a year quit work due to ill-health, according to non-profit research firm Rand, while the Financial Times calculated that stress costs the UK £70 billion annually.

DHU, in line with other NHS providers, has attendance and absence issues which are costly to the business. So we now offer employees a number of health and wellbeing initiatives including a mini health check’ via Arden & Gem and access to medical advice via Westfield Health.

Mini health checks

The project aims to change our health and wellbeing culture to change with the times. Keeping people productive and not exhausted is what brings benefit, reduces our costs and improves our service to the NHS. These mini health checks aim to:

  • Provide lifestyle analysis and advice after each Mini Health Check
  • Present the damages caused by stress and how to combat stress/mental health in an informative manner
  • Provide relevant health information for staff to take back to work/home and incorporate into their lifestyle
  • Offer ‘Mini Health’ Checks to include height and weight to determine individual Body Mass Index (BMI) measures, Blood Pressure and lifestyle advice
  • Provide advice on picking up signs early and lifestyle changes to prevent stress
  • Provide access to expert medical advice and get people back to work as quickly as possible

Company doctor

We work with Westfield Health (a ‘not for profit’ social enterprise) on a second initiative to improve the health and wellbeing of our staff.

Employees who join the company doctor scheme can pick up the phone to arrange a call back from a practising UK GP to discuss any health issues and receive advice or a diagnosis from anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day.

We may have staff at home that are sick but won’t call 111 because they won’t run the risk of having to speak to a work colleague, and working 24/7 shift patterns make it difficult to secure a GP appointment. It’s the closest thing to a surgery appointment, but without the wait.

Common ailments, musculoskeletal injuries, back pain and stress account for the majority of our short term absence, so fast access to a GP for early referral and intervention, particularly in relation to mental health and musculoskeletal disorders, is invaluable and might help prevent short term absence becoming long term.

Benefits for our business

These initiatives, alongside the telephone counselling service, physiotherapy assessment and occupational health managers’ helpline that we also offer, provide a number of benefits for our business:

  • A valuable employee benefit package
  • Improves staff productivity, motivation and morale
  • Helps to recruit, retain and reward our staff
  • Helps as part of pay reviews
  • Helps employees with stress-related problems
  • Supports our duty of care obligations

We measure attendance levels over a period of piloting such benefits and compare it with the same period the previous year.

Improving attendance will have a positive impact on patients and will ensure that DHU is able to hit its performance targets as planned during the winter period. This should take pressure off other parts of the NHS system. 

This article was written by David Walsh, director of HR and OD at DHU Health Care CIC

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