A client got dinged on an audit because they were not having their employees medically evaluated before being provided a respirator. They contacted their local medical facility to seek help with this and of course, the facility said they could do the medical evaluation. This morning I received their first batch for me to sign-off on as their “safety rep”. They paid good money for these evaluations! Would you sign-off on these? Sadly this is from a major national medical care provider, although Occupational Health is obviously not their specialty…
My main question is how in the h_ll does an M.D. sign off on this persons ability to wear a respirator when they have no idea
- what type of respirator that will be worn,
- the work level,
- the extent of usage,
- the length of time to be worn, and
- special considerations such as wearing a LEVEL A suit with the respirator
You may be asking yourself as to why my medical eval form requires my signature??? Well, I normally do not require this once we have established the LHCP is doing things correctly. It is merely a Quality Check for me to see the forms before we accept them and file them away. And it worked just like it was supposed to – these forms were all denied and the facility and the LHCP are redoing the evaluations.
