Hi, I am looking for some feedback regarding the procedures which other companies use in terms of getting medical reports from their own occupational health.

At the moment, our occupational health does not release reports until they have received authorisation from the employee. They then give them 21 days to respond before releasing the report.

My argument here is that, since we are referring the employee to occupational health and the employee has agreed to attend this meeting, we do not require their consent to then get the report – the worse case scenario would be that we pay for this assessment, and then the employee doesn’t give us consent to get the report.

I have also asked occupational health if they can reduce the length of time for the employee to respond to 7 days, instead of 21 days, to speed up the process but they have said this is a legal requirement – I haven’t heard of this before!

Does anyone have any feedback on this?

Thanks
Donna