In 2005, just months after implementing the Mitrais Occupational Health and
Safety (M-OH&S) medical system for the medical facilities serving its mines
in South Africa, a delighted Eyesizwe (currently under Exxaro) reported
information availability and retrieval rates up by 70 percent. This greatly
improved quality of medical service delivery, reduced sundry office by 80
percent and cut administration time by 60 percent, thereby improving staff
use and assignment to higher value activities.
Prompted by the need to ensure full legal compliance with all South African
occupational Safety, Health, Workplace Environment and Quality (SHEQ)
regulations for its two medical facilities servicing four coal mines, Eyesizwe
wanted a truly integrated occupational health IT program to replace a limited
in-house developed system.
It was soon to discover that “off-the-shelf” solutions were either well
equipped in one of the occupational SHEQ functions but provided little
occupational health capability or conversely were strong in medical functions
but provided little SHEQ capacity.
As Mitrais’ Hospital Information System (M-HIS) was already designed to
interface with ERPs, Eyesizwe commissioned Mitrais to design a custom made
solution that would interface with the mine’s Ellipse enterprise asset
management program. The new industrial edition of M-HIS for Eyesizwe would
include extensive occupational health and workplace environment (hygiene)
features.
The existing Microsoft Access based medical information system, developed
in-house by an employee of Eyesizwe's IT division, failed to capture live data
in a real-time process. Instead, this stand-alone system became a passive
repository for post-the-event data, entered simply to comply with occupational
health legal reporting requirements.
The Access system was not integrated with any other IT programs, did not
support any business processes and permitted only limited emailing of manually
created reports. This led to the separate management of business and medical
processes within Eyesizwe health facilities, resulting in great difficulty at
any time in obtaining accurate reports of their operations.
Eyesizwe wanted a solution that would enable its medical units to totally
understand the complete picture across all individual patient, business process
and medical facilities by generating, capturing and communicating data in real
time while at the same time allowing full compliance with all South African SHEQ
legal regulations.
The new version of Mitrais Occupational Health and Safety (M-OH&S) would be
built on the successful existing M-HIS modules which were designed to manage
primary hospital health care processes. The industrial edition developed for
Eyesizwe would incorporate another four modules designed to manage the working
environmental and occupational health issues which are critical requirements for
hospitals and clinics that operate in industrial settings.
It was vital for Eyesizwe to not only capture the medical data surrounding an
injured worker’s treatment but just as important that the administrative data
was captured simultaneously and tracked, in a real-time process that
demonstrated the company’s full legal compliance with all steps of the
Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act process.
Similarly, Eyesizwe wanted to manage the worker’s employment lifespan and
give credence to the International Labour Organisation’s definition of an
occupational being: the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of
physical and mental wellbeing of workers in all occupations by preventing
departure from health, controlling risks and the adaptation of work to people,
and people to their jobs
The new M-OH&S occupational health modules were designed by Mitrais to allow
configurable scheduling of medical tests and examination scheduling, yet
integrated with the human resources database, thereby optimising the management
of a workers employment and related employment lifespan.
The new M-OH&S modules also overcame the possibility of data manipulation by
capturing clinical and administrative data in real time. The system
transparently self-monitors, audits and validates all data entry events while a
content management system determines which staff members are given access to
what data on any particular page.
The bottom line for Eyesizwe was an enhanced ability to manage compliance
with OH&S regulations and COID Act while reducing the financial risk of
penalties and civil claims. These benefits flowed from the miner’s newly
acquired ability to easily produce OH&S and COID conforming reports drawn from
clinical and administrative data entered in real-time.
The new M-OH&S occupational health modules also enable Eyesizwe's full
compliance with its occupational health and workers compensation legal
liabilities. The South African workers compensation system ties the financial
amount of a company’s legal liability to an injured worker directly with its
compliance to the country’s strict Occupational Health and Safety and
Compensation of Injuries and Diseases Acts. Failure to demonstrate complete
compliance with those regulations significantly increases a company’s financial
exposure to government penalties and worker claims.
The improved administrative processes of the M-OH&S also led to other
significant cost savings for Eyesizwe. The South African Compensation of
Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act require workers compensation claims to be
filed within a statutory period of time beyond which the claim becomes the
liability of the company concerned to settle. Thanks to M-OH&S comprehensive
reporting features, complying Eyesizwe claims are now easily filed within the
regulatory time frame. Clinical staff who formerly took days to find and compile
all the necessary claim documentation now complete the task easily in just one
hour making them available for reassignment to more productive tasks.
Inter-departmental communication within Eyesizwe’s health facilities also has
been greatly enhanced by the M-OH&S. New contractor employee candidates must
pass through security, medical and human resource departments at Eyesizwe as
part of the induction process. Because of previously poor inter-departmental
communications, this system was open to fraudulent manipulation leading to some
inappropriate personnel being employed in the mines.
M-OH&S solved this
problem by not allowing candidates to advance through to the next step in the
employment process without first obtaining all previous approvals which were
transparently made available for all departments to see in real time. The next
edition of MMS will also manage the issuing of employee security clearance
cards.
Enhanced pharmaceutical and medical supplies stock control by the M-OH&S has
led to major cost savings at the Eyesizwe hospital and clinic. Accurate
inventories of stock are now possible in a system which permits location and
users of stock to be identified and wastage through over-ordering, “dead stock”
or “out-of-date stock” to be avoided. The cost of medicines and treatment
supplied to individual employee patients can be on-billed to the appropriate
company department or labour broker via the finance department or in the case of
an employee family member being treated, cost recovery made from the medical aid
or directly through staff pay roll deductions.
The M-OH&S system also provides email facilities that automatically notify
supervisors of sick leave provided to an employee as a result of medical testing
and treatment. This helps minimise productivity losses by allowing prior
notification and replacement of absent staff. Similar emails warn production
personnel of individual workers health risks and required adaptations to
minimise the risks to the worker and employer.
The M-OH&S is a paperless system requiring almost no filing. This minimises
opportunities for the introduction of fraudulent documents, enforces adherence
to legal and health procedures and provides instant clinical test results and
patient history to all authorised staff.
M-OH&Sdata input accuracy is greatly improved by enforced adherence to
standards and procedures. It flags discrepancies and inaccuracies through
functionality failure, flags exceptions in data, and requires mandatory fields
while instant calculations quickly identify any discrepancies.