Taking occupational health clinic management into the future

It’s time for clinics to change their buying habits when it comes to sourcing equipment. Since the implementation of the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act, and the responsibility that it places on employers to perform medical surveillance and retain records, there has been a slow, but steady, shift towards outsourcing these services to occupational health clinics.

For an occupational health clinic to be profitable it needs return customers; it needs to build up a history and a relationship with the customer. This needs to be based on efficiency, service, trust and added benefits.

Once a clinic has established all these aspects of service delivery, it then needs to consider how to manage its customers and all the associated records.

The common practice has been for clinics to source their audiometry, vision and spirometry equipment from one or more suppliers and rely on the individual sets of software that come with those devices.

Once the clinic realises that it needs a better management tool and it turns to software solutions, it’s often too late, as not all software can integrate with all hardware. It is then often left with no choice but to continue with the chaotic, paper-intensive systems that it employed when it was less busy. This is the “top down” approach – source the hardware first and efficient management systems second.

There is, however, a better way of equipping a clinic with the right hardware and software to manage customer expectations, while increasing patient throughput. This is the “bottom up” approach – which is to sort out the management systems first and let that help you decide on your equipment.

Deep Red Technologies was established in 2004 when its founder, Richard Pfab, realised a need for specialised audiometry software that would deliver accurate and comprehensive results. African Management Software (AMS) was born, and has grown from strength to strength over the past 13 years to become the leading turnkey solution for medical surveillance management for occupational health clinics in South Africa.

AMS integrates seamlessly with a wide variety of audiometers, spirometers and vision screeners. Patient and medical records are retained together with computer-generated documents, which are saved on the system, or through Deep Red’s new Cloud (or private Cloud) solution.

With remote reviewing capability and legal electronic signing of certificates, the costs and time wasted by travelling to and from occupational health clinics can be eliminated.

Watch out for AMS Online (coming soon) where customers can log into their profiles and download their own employee certificates via the internet, without having to phone the clinic every other day to obtain records.

It’s the new way of setting up a clinic, or taking an existing clinic into the future. Once the management systems are set up through AMS, the hardware that best suits the clinic’s needs can be selected.

For more information on AMS, call Grant on +27 83 453 4052 or drop him an e-mail at grant@deepred.co.za.