AQW 10374/22-27

Mr Nick Mathison
Alliance Party
Strangford

Tabled Date: 18/04/2024
Answered On Date: 29/04/2024
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Finance, pursuant to AQO 247/22-27, to detail the average waiting time for an Occupational Health Service medical assessment for the last three years.

Answer:

Significant work has been ongoing within my Department’s OHS to reduce the waiting times for assessments. An Occupational Health Consultant has taken up the Lead Medical Officer position within the Occupational Health Service in March 2024 and the launch of a recruitment competition for additional medical officers will be launched at the start of May 2024. As part of this recruitment competition, we are also seeking to appoint additional nursing staff, and are introducing a new role within the OHS of Occupational Health technicians. When additional medical officers, nursing staff and occupational health technicians are in post, we are confident that this will have a positive impact on waiting times to access occupational health services.

The Occupational Health Service (OHS) broad range of activities often requires input from several internal medical staff, and from external sources such as GP’s and others who have provided specialist medical services to OHS service users. It is often the case that obtaining all the information required from the various sources contributes to delays in the occupational health assessment process. Given the complexity involved and the current resourcing pressures, this can result in some assessments with a waiting time of up to four months. Assessment can be arranged more promptly depending on the range of factors involved and the complexity of the assessment.

The current Occupational Health Service (OHS) case management system does not provide an average waiting time for medical assessments, or the ability to provide this over a period of time, for example over the last 3 years. As part of the OHS transformation, a new cloud based IT system is being procured that will enable us to provide more detailed business intelligence and trend data, for analysis, comparison and improvement purposes.