Implementation of Electronic Pre-Trip Medical Examination Systems

From a Formal Approach to Real Control: Why Medical Examination Automation is Needed

Ensuring safety in production and transport is impossible without high-quality monitoring of employees' health. The traditional approach to pre-trip and pre-shift medical examinations often comes down to a formality: a single paramedic is physically unable to fully examine hundreds of workers during a short shift change. As a result, queues form, and the quality of the examination drops. Alexander Balukhta, Deputy Director for Transport Security at Highland Gold, shares practical experience in solving this problem through the implementation of electronic medical examination systems.

The speaker analyzes a situation familiar to many enterprises: the health center meets all legal requirements, has licenses and equipment, but there is no real control over the workers' condition. With a standard time of at least three and a half minutes for a quality examination of one person, the throughput of a traditional health center is critically low. This creates risks of admitting people to work in a state of fatigue, alcohol or drug intoxication, as well as with dangerous health deviations, such as high blood pressure.

Choosing a Solution: Why Automation is More Profitable Than Expanding the Staff

Faced with the need to improve the quality of medical examinations, the company's management considered several options. Leaving everything as is meant accepting the risks of accidents and fines. Increasing the staff of medical workers to ensure the proper quality of examinations would require significant financial costs (the payroll fund alone would amount to about 6 million rubles). The third option — step-by-step automation of the process — turned out to be the most effective.

The presentation details the criteria for selecting equipment for automated medical examinations:

• Reliable barrier: the system must guarantee that persons in an altered state are not allowed to work.
• Minimizing the human factor: eliminating the possibility of "making a deal" with a medical worker.
• High throughput: the time for one worker to pass the examination should not exceed one minute, so as not to disrupt the shift change and transport departure.
• Certification: availability of documents for the entire equipment complex, not just for its individual elements.

Overcoming Resistance and System Integration

The implementation of any innovations often faces resistance from the team. Using a pilot site in the Zabaykalsky Krai as an example, the speaker shows how the company overcame sabotage and vandalism. Surprisingly, the main opponents of the innovations at first were the medical workers themselves, who were accustomed to the old ways. It required large-scale explanatory work, personal meetings with teams, and even the dismissal of some employees who categorically refused to accept the new rules.

An important stage was the integration of the electronic medical examination system with other enterprise processes:

• Connection with the access control system (ACS): the worker is identified by a pass, and the results of the medical examination are automatically transferred to other systems.
• Automation of equipment issuance: the lamp room operator sees the worker's clearance on their monitor, which prevents the issuance of equipment to persons who have not passed the medical examination.
• Automation of the dispatcher's workplace: the waybill is printed only if there is a positive medical examination result in the system, which saves drivers' time.

Implementation Results and Care for the Team's Health

Strict blood pressure control (the admission threshold is set at 140/90) revealed health problems in many workers that they were unaware of. The company did not mass-fire such employees, but formed risk groups. Workers were recommended to undergo an in-depth examination and prescribed treatment. Upon stabilizing their blood pressure with medication, they continue to work.

The main result of the system's implementation is that over 17 months, the enterprise has not recorded a single case of medical evacuation due to a heart attack or stroke associated with high blood pressure, nor a single traffic accident due to the drivers' health condition.

What you will learn from this webinar:

• How to justify the economic feasibility of implementing electronic medical examinations to management?
• What criteria to use when choosing equipment for automating pre-trip examinations?
• How to effectively combat staff sabotage when implementing new control systems?
• How to integrate the results of electronic medical examinations with the issuance of waybills and PPE?
• What to do with employees whose blood pressure regularly exceeds the norm?