Fragmented data, data gaps and the problem with ROI

Fragmented Data

In the other knowledge documents, we have briefly discussed Health and Safety, the Medical Model and why we need to understand not only the occupational risks but also the personal risk factors.

One of many problems faced by employers in evaluating the effectiveness of their Health and Safety strategies is the fragmentation of data.

Health and Safety risk assessment and compliance data are often held in a separate platform. This is likely to be separate to the OH platform that will contain confidential data and hence subject to GDPR and Consent of the employee where any sensitive personal data are held. Private healthcare information will often be held by an external provider who believes that they "own" that data. Where the private healthcare plan is provided by a Trust the data are owned by the Trust Company and subject to Data Protection Requirements and consent of individuals similar to OH (although these data do not relate fitness to work or any other aspect of work but they do hold health and treatment data). EAP data are again normally externally, owned by the provider but hold very important data. Other insurance will hold lesser amount of data albeit the data could be of value in assessing the overall personal risk of the individual BUT must not be provided to the employer in any form without the direct written consent of the employee, normally when managing a return to work, group income protection claim, incapacity or an employee wishing to exit on a compromise agreement.

As outlined in the other knowledge documents, the fragmented data and the data "gaps" means that a full evaluation of whether an organisations health and safety strategies are appropriate and effective and whether the employee benefit support is helping to reduce that risk is fraught with difficulties.

Data Gaps

• Health and Safety: it is difficult to know as an employer whether the work is likely to cause harm and to what degree without and understanding of whether the person may be vulnerable to certain types of psychological exposure.
• Sickness Absence: normally ranked as the main reason for days lost and the highest cost to the business but how many organisations know whether this is caused or made worse by work, is the perception of the individual, is a combination of work and personal risks or purely personal? Why do an employer or their confidential providers need to know? Because the person can be supported and managed more appropriately with the data. If we compared this to a clinical assessment a clinician could easily prescribe the wrong medication, misdiagnose a condition or treat the person with the incorrect intervention if the assessment is not considering causation and contributory risks,
• Occupational Health: mental health illnesses are often the highest number of cases managed under a single definition. With waiting times significant under the NHS, the cost of treatment is likely to be borne by the employer via their EAP, Private Healthcare, or Occupational Health service. It is highly likely that a large proportion of the cases could be managed at a far lower cost and improve the long-term prospects of the individual if the interventions are not just standard clinical sessions e.g. counselling and CBT.
• Group Income Protection: Mental Health claims often rank as the most common and likely to last several years.
• Employee Assistance Programme: provided to support Stress, Anxiety & Depression but only reaching circa 5% of the population, when genuine psychological health is likely to be far broader.
• Employers Liability: one of the most difficult areas to defend especially if the psychological risk assessments are not in place or robust.
• Private healthcare plans: normally low levels of claims are the plan often due to limited benefit and or the fact that most conditions are not significant mental health problems e.g. Bipolar.
• Wellbeing: an opportunity to reduce the risk of both physical and psychological ill health by demonstrating how our systems are all connected and that assessing and treating them separately is likely to result in missed opportunities to support the individual more proactively, improve their quality of life and reduce the cost of the support needed.

To be able to review the risk as a complete picture across the demographic data would provide a significant insight with any personal risk data. However, if this can be added without breaching any form of confidentiality it would help and employer significantly to ensure that they:

• Provide the most appropriate benefits
• Assess whether the benefits are delivering as expected
• Understand their occupational risks versus the personal risks
• Evolve the support provided to employees to ensure it is delivering to the needs of our modern world and the people that live within it.

Health Risk Measurement

It is hoped that the above outlines the "gaps" in current day practice for measuring risk.

Just like everything else that has been discussed above the "health risk measurements" are also isolated and siloed. For example:

• Health Surveillance is conducted for physical exposures, what about the psychosocial exposures of this work?
• Wellbeing assessments, often refer to mental health and may include physical health but are they holistic and capturing the pertinent data to help the individual. They will be in another system.
• Health Screening, often focuses on the clinical risks and not the range of non-clinical e.g. functional movement or nutrition. Highly likely that these are in another system.
• Snapshot screening, may indicate a risk where someone can be referred but again in another system or an App.
• Other, in todays age of Apps and online tools there is a plethora of data including that on personal wearables that with consent may be valuable as part of the risk assessment process BUT employees really need to know that this is for their benefit and not for some other negative reason. They need to TRUST the organisation.

Return on Investment

With data so fragmented, risks not fully understood and costs often not fully recorded, calculating a Return on Investment is fraught with limitations. Providers often publish ROIs, but they also have limited access to the data,

Integrated Workforce Health Risk Management

As data are key to the identification and management of both occupational and personal risks then it is evident that currently so much of the data about an organisation is not held by the organisation.

The way forward is to be able to consolidate and analyse that data within a single analytical platform built for this purpose. This platform needs to be able to collect, harmonise and analyse data across multiple suppliers, benefits and layers of information.

ORIGIN have built and will continue to evolve such a platform to enable employers to:

• Understand their occupational and their people risks
• Identify whether their existing strategies are delivering the required outcomes
• Analyse what benefits are delivering to those needs and what are not
• Achieve continuous improvement for the benefit of their business and their people

Having been involved in the only truly integrated health service for more than 25 years, the founders of ORIGIN and the knowledge and experience to truly understand how to continuously involve healthcare strategies across the range of compliance, prevention, management, productivity and longevity.