Analyzing Occupational Health

The SAP EHS Management for SAP S/4HANA, occupational health application supports general employee occupational healthcare in the enterprise, and the planning and execution of special health surveillance protocols.

Special surveillance is required for anyone who may be exposed to influences of a chemical, physical, or biological nature at their workplace, or who perform activities that pose a health hazard. Health surveillance protocols can also include vaccinations or - as in the United States - random drug tests.

Occupational Health comprises the following features:

• Basic Data

  This component enables you to specify the data that you require for managing the occupational health protocols used in your enterprise. This includes defining and assigning examinations, health surveillance protocols, trigger levels, and so on. You can use the Question Catalog and Questionnaire functions to create occupational health questionnaires. The data required to compile questionnaires is created and managed in the question catalog. Questionnaires can be completed online in the system, or be printed and scanned into the system again once they have been completed.

• Schedule planning

  This component enables you to determine which persons must be registered for health surveillance protocols. You can also open medical services and plan the appropriate appointments for each of them.

• Medical service

  You use this component to enter and manage all the necessary examination data, such as diagnoses, examination results, work restrictions for health reasons, and so on. You can also import the results of medical tests from external systems. Also, occupational health questionnaires are also completed in the medical service component.

  You can access and edit all the data on the case history of a person, as well as the data on consultations and follow-up activities (medical measures).

• Reporting

  You can use this component to evaluate the recorded data statistically.

On the SAP Fiori Launchpad, there is a Fiori Catalog for Occupational Health available with a subset of Fiori applications in the form of tiles. More tiles can be configured and existing files can be hidden. You can see that the catalogs for those roles are assigned to your user. 

The Occupational Health solution in SAP EHS Management for SAP S/4HANA provides a repository to track the occupational health history of employees. It drives a risk-based occupational health process with integration back to central human resources (HR), also known as Human Capital Management (HCM), data.

The solution provides the following capabilities:

• Define health surveillance protocols including laboratory and physical tests and questionnaires.
• Assign protocols to individuals manually or automatically based on the work area and hazards to which they are exposed.
• Schedule appointments and send documentation/ questionnaires to the patient. Enable ad-hoc consultations.
• Capture examination results, diagnoses, follow up events, work restrictions in the central electronic patient file.

Customers have the following benefits:

• Central list of health surveillance protocols to drive the scheduling of medical services and testing for the appropriate personnel.
• Visibility to the identified risks that require medical monitoring.

The SAP EHS Management for SAP S/4HANA, Occupational Health application supports general employee occupational healthcare in your enterprise, and the planning and execution of special health surveillance protocols.

The process of Occupational Health & Safety (OH) starts with protocol determination. Special surveillance is required for those persons who may be exposed to certain influences of a chemical, physical, or biological nature at their workplace, or who perform activities that pose a health hazard. Health surveillance protocols can also include vaccinations or - as in the United States - random drug tests. To ensure that all the persons in the company receive the protocols that are necessary for them, you either have the system assign the protocols automatically, or you assign them manually to the relevant persons.

The occupational health can be used to schedule planning. You display everyone who must undergo a health surveillance protocol within a certain period (for example, in the next four weeks) and open a medical service for each of these persons. You use the planning cockpit to plan the appointments for the examinations.

Next, the component supports you to manage all the necessary examination data. When a person appears for a consultation in your health center, you enter the results along with your diagnoses, reservations, and other data relating to the examination in the medical service for the person. You enter any consultation visits and follow-up activities (medical measures) in the medical service. You can also access and edit the person's case history (anamnesis).

When all the examinations are completed and all the data entered, you close the medical service. If a periodic examination is necessary, the system proposes the person for a medical service again on the date that it has calculated.

Finally, the business process ends with tracking and reporting of occupational health data. Comprehensive reporting options are available to give you an overview of all company occupational health examinations (including results and other related data).

You can use occupational health functionality to evaluate the recorded data statistically.

In occupational health, it is possible to create questionnaires that are tailored to individual requirements. The questions, texts, and headers that you use in the questionnaires are part of the setup; they are managed in the question catalog.

The following types of questionnaires can be differentiated in the system:

• General questionnaires

  A questionnaire that contains a selection of the catalog entries defined in the question catalog and also serves as a template for specific questionnaires. General questionnaires, unlike specific questionnaires, are not assigned to any object.

• Specific questionnaires

  A questionnaire that is assigned to a specific object.

The questionnaires assigned to health surveillance protocols are based on the type of health checks. The assignment can be done with a restricted validity period (Start Date and End Date).

A health surveillance protocol is a set of medical examinations and tests that a person must undergo to make sure that possible health risks are recognized, treated and, if needed, prevented. Health surveillance protocols are, for example, necessary when a new employee is hired, or when a person is exposed to certain agents on the job or at the workplace.

Process interface to risk assessment as a function in EHS Health and Safety Management:

To trigger a health surveillance protocol, the system accesses a rating of the amount and frequency of exposure that occurs. In a risk assessment process, you can identify agents that exist at a workplace or are present when performing a certain job. You can analyze the exposure to the agent by comparing workplace sampling data to occupational exposure limits and evaluating the risk associated with the agent. The trigger levels for health surveillance protocols must also be entered. This allows the system to compare the actual exposure measurements or ratings with the trigger levels at which a certain protocol is proposed.

The occupational health process is part of the main employee lifecycle process in Health and Safety. Occupational health, risk assessment, and Human Capital Management (HCM) are tightly integrated to provide a full coverage of the lifecycle of an employee in the company.

The determination of the health surveillance protocols is an essential step, which triggers the medical planning and medical service execution process. As shown in the preceding image, the protocol determination can be done manually and automatically.

Manual assignment is useful in the case of new hires, for example, when the protocol assigned is a periodic examination instead of an initial examination because of their previous medical history.

To automatically determine the health surveillance protocols assigned to a person, the system performs the following checks:

• The system uses exposure, tasks, age, or gender to determine which protocols a person must undergo. The user entered the relevant data while editing the health surveillance protocols and the personal data. The system matches up this data with the personal data and with the person's organizational assignment.
• The system uses organizational assignments to find the objects (similar exposure group, position, job, task) where agents (like chemicals or noise) are present and where the exposure limit has been exceeded, as well as the persons to whom these objects are assigned.
• The system uses the personal data to check the age and gender of employees and determine if protocols need to be performed.

The determination of the health surveillance protocols is a fundamental piece of the occupational health process which, first of all, documents the requirements for specific surveillance protocols. It also determines which protocols must be assigned to which employee.

The process follows these steps:

1. In order to sort people who are exposed to the same agents into groups, you create exposure groups (SEG = similar exposure group) or other objects in the Risk Assessment.
2. You use EHS Risk Assessment integration to select relevant health surveillance protocols from Occupational Health and assign trigger values like Occupational Exposure Limits (OEL) in the system to trigger exposure-related health surveillance protocols.
3. You create the examinations that need to be performed as part of the company health surveillance protocols audiogram examination for the noise protocol, for example.
4. You then create individual medical tests for the examinations. You assign these tests to the relevant examinations.
5. After you have created the examinations and tests, you can enter the health surveillance protocols being used in your company.
6. You assign the examinations required for specific health surveillance protocols to the correct protocols.
7. During actual examinations, you can add predefined diagnoses to the data that you are entering. Before you can do this, however, you must create diagnoses in the system.
8. You can use the SAP Business Partner component to create addresses for health centers, laboratories, and physicians (if they are not already in the HR master record). For example, you can then assign this data to a test or a medical service at a later date.
9. If there is more than one health center in your company, and they are responsible for different plants or groups of employees, you can assign persons to the individual centers.
10. To have employees answer occupational health questionnaires, you need to create question catalogs and questionnaires. A questionnaire can be completed by the employee or by the physician, either on paper or on the PC screen. If it is completed on paper, you can scan it back into the system later. The system then assigns the answers to the corresponding questions such that even in this case, automatic evaluation options are possible.
11. If the same questionnaire is always used for specific examinations, it can be assigned to the relevant health surveillance protocol. This ensures that a person who appears for a specific health surveillance protocol is given the correct questionnaire.

After competing these steps, all the necessary basic data is available in the system, and the user can now plan, perform, and evaluate health surveillance protocols for the company.

The preceding example displays the health surveillance protocol for an individual named Jack Williams. Each assigned protocol (like the preceding vaccination) can contain one or more relevant questionnaires; this depends on the type of the protocol.

The occupational health solution enables you to determine which health surveillance protocols are due, schedule the relevant appointments, and send out invitations.

The Planning Cockpit is a calendar- and shift-based scheduling tool to set up medical appointments based on employee availability and surveillance protocol requirements.

• You can determine the persons who have to undergo a health surveillance protocol.
• If several health surveillance protocols for a person are due at about the same time, you can plan one appointment for all of them in scheduling and then create a medical service.
• If you are using the SAP component Time Management, you can access the data on employee absences (illness and vacation, for example).
• You can print out an invitation for the person in question.
• You can access the appointment status at any time to see whether appointments have been accepted or canceled.
• You can find out what appointments are scheduled for the current day by displaying the daily list and printing it out as required.

Once scheduling is completed, e-mail notifications with a formal invite are sent out to the affected employees. Furthermore, the relevant managers are informed.

A reason for triggering the medical service can also be a first aid case registered by a first aid physician. The doctor can create the injury/illness log entry in the SAP Incident Management solution. If further treatment and medical checks are required, the doctor can directly create a medical service from the injury/illness log entry.

With this integration, the Incident Management solution generates a link between an injury and the further treatment (performed at the local or external doctor) in the occupational health system.

The Medical Service is another fundamental piece of the occupational health process. Here, users are able to handle all the processes involved in managing health surveillance protocols in the company health center. It is possible to open a medical service for each person who is required to undergo one or more health surveillance protocols on a certain date. A medical service contains all the data that is related for the scheduled protocols, such as work restrictions due to health reasons, diagnoses, or examination results. The questionnaires assigned to health surveillance protocols can also be generated for the relevant persons and can be completed in this component.

A history of all appointments, test results, vaccinations, and other information is tracked for each employee who has been part of the occupational health process.

Medical Services can be performed based on surveillance protocols or injuries and illnesses suffered by employees.

With the Medical Service app, the system allows tracking of all information related to the medical case of an individual.

The Case History tab displays all the types of cases related to the person.

On theProtocol / General Examination tab page, enter any reservations that you have about the health of the person examined and the date of the next appointment.

On the Vaccination tab, vaccinations can be assigned to persons and details about when they were performed can be logged. This procedure can be used to assign vaccinations and to document their details for persons who have to be vaccinated owing to their tasks or activities.

For all Examinations (tests and treatments), specific results can be stored and determination against acceptable ranges can be performed.

You can enter an examination category, a service provider, an examination, test results on the Test Result tab of the examination detail screen, and other information as required. You can also display data archived about previous diagnoses, restrictions, tests, and so on.

Examinations are assigned to the health surveillance protocols in the context of which they must be performed.

All relevant diagnoses can be specified in the Diagnoses tab.

The diagnosis code identifies a disease in a diagnosis catalog. For example, the ICD-10 diagnosis catalog uses a four-digit alphanumeric code (such as J06.9 for the diagnosis "Acute upper respiratory infection, unspecified.")

A diagnosis catalog is subdivided into individual diagnosis groups. These groups classify diseases into infectious and parasitic diseases, diseases of the blood and hemopoietic organs, and so on.

The priority specified for a diagnosis enables you to restrict the number of diagnoses displayed for diagnosis selection. If a certain diagnosis is frequent in your company, the diagnosis is assigned priority 1. If a diagnosis is rare, you assign priority 2.

You document brief consultations, for example, when a patient visits the health center briefly for medical advice or is given medication for a headache. You can use a text editor to note down comments and details.

This Statistics component contains reports that evaluate the data entered in Occupational Health according to different criteria. The data in these reports includes examination results, restrictions, diagnoses, questionnaires, assignments, and so on. Full medical records or parts of the records can be selected and extracted for mails, print-outs, or file-export.

Here is a list of features:

• Various simple and enhanced selection options are available, depending on the type of report
• You can adapt the settings for a layout of a report to suit your requirements
• You can send a report to other users
• You can customize reports by storing them as local files so that you can use a spreadsheet program, for example, to work on them

Further standard functions are available for reports.

Several other reports are available to support the analysis of the occupational health data in the system.

The preceding example report displays a list of the laboratory reports. The search criteria allow the output to be narrowed down to the desired use case. In this example, the examination category and the test number are used as criteria. The doctor could list all the employees with the examination category Laboratory Examination and with a Test Number "Hemoglobin."

With the list of laboratory tests, the doctor can compare the physical values and check them against their normal range. This list can indicate which results are still to be assessed.

The Occupational Health solution contains functional components in three separate areas.

• Medical service initiation.
• Medical service processing.
• Medical service outputs.

During the initiation of medical services, the solution provides functional components to determine required surveillance protocols, to document brief consultations, and to record examination-related data.

During the processing of medical services, the component enables you to:

• Record laboratory tests and physical tests.
• Document test results, diagnoses, treating physicians, medical measures, and examinations.
• Track case history.
• Manage documents, vaccinations, and restrictions.

The component enables you also to create different outputs like schedules, protocol logs, and medical certificates. It also provides report programs to evaluate medical service data about diagnoses, tests, restrictions, and so on.

Also, outputs are available in the occupational health solution, which are related to statistics on protocols, list of examinations, and so on.

*Includes extra functionality delivered with a separate consulting solution, which requires an additional cost but no additional license implications.

SAP EHS Management for SAP S/4HANA, occupational health complies with data protection requirements. These requirements comply with the common understanding from the worldwide data privacy acts (Germany, Europe, and USA) on how to do the following:

• Collect data only which is required for business purposes.
• Handle data properly and careful (data security.)
• Delete data if there is no purpose any more.
• Block data during retention period.

In the administration guide, you'll find more details to help you understand how the data protection requirements have been achieved.

• Deletion of Personal Data for Occupational Health
• Read Access Logging for Occupational Health
• Change Log in Occupational Health

The product assistance documentation supports you in the data destruction process in Occupational Health.

• Data Destruction in Occupational Health
• Data Protection in Occupational Health