What are occupational health services, what are employer and employee obligations, and what does iTutor offer in this area?

Summary: In employment relationships, great emphasis is placed on the health and safety of employees, which is why occupational health services (OHS) have significant importance. These are not just formal obligations of employees and employers but represent an entire system fundamentally influencing workplace safety, accident prevention, occupational diseases, and more. This article summarizes basic information on what OHS are, the obligations of employers and employees, and how modern technology can be used for OHS record keeping.

Basic Information

Occupational health services (OHS) are not a form of healthcare but preventive health services. Their goal is to protect the health of job applicants and employees. A specific feature of OHS is that they are provided to employees, job applicants, and also pupils and students during practical training, based on a contract between the healthcare service provider and the employer. OHS include:

• assessment of the impact of work activity, work environment, and working conditions on health
• conducting occupational medical examinations with a preventive character
• health protection advice related to work
• employee training
• regular workplace supervision

The employer must ensure these services in cooperation with the OHS provider for all employees.

OHS are therefore not merely a formality but an essential part of responsible human resource management and occupational safety. A properly set-up OHS system protects employees' health, reduces sickness absence, and contributes to higher productivity and workplace satisfaction.

Who Provides OHS

OHS providers can be contracted healthcare providers authorized to perform these activities. Most often, these are general practitioners or specialized medical facilities. The employer signs a contract with the provider, who then becomes the guarantor of the occupational health services. It is important to emphasize that OHS must be provided independently and according to professional standards. The physician is obliged to maintain confidentiality but at the same time must inform the employer about an employee’s medical incapacity to perform specific work.

The occupational health services provider can be a natural or legal person authorized to provide healthcare services under the law, specifically in general practice or occupational medicine.

Job Categorization

From the OHS perspective, jobs are divided into four categories according to the level of health risk:

• Category 1 – jobs without risks, typically office professions
• Category 2 – jobs with minimal risk (e.g., light industry work)
• Category 3 – jobs with increased risk (e.g., work with chemicals, noise)
• Category 4 – jobs with high risk that can seriously harm health (e.g., work with carcinogens)

Job categorization is carried out by the employer in cooperation with an occupational safety specialist and the regional hygiene station. This classification determines the frequency of medical examinations and preventive measure requirements.

Employer Obligations

The employer’s main obligations include:

• Signing a contract with the OHS provider
• Ensuring entry and periodic medical examinations
• Informing the OHS provider about working conditions and health risks
• Covering the costs related to OHS
• Ensuring employees do not perform work if they are medically unfit

Failure to comply with these obligations may lead to fines from the labor inspectorate or regional hygiene station.

Employee Rights and Obligations

The core obligations of employees are:

• Attending medical examinations when assigned by the employer
• Following the doctor’s recommendations and occupational safety measures
• Informing the employer about health changes that may affect work performance

Employees have the right to professional assessment of their fitness and to the protection of their personal and medical data.

OHS Provider Rights and Obligations

The Act on Specific Health Services imposes several duties on the OHS provider, especially:

• Informing employees and employers about possible impacts of working conditions on employees’ health
• Conducting occupational medical examinations and regular workplace supervision
• Cooperating with employers, employees, and supervisory bodies regarding occupational health and safety
• Immediately informing the employer of any serious findings affecting occupational safety and health
• Submitting notifications to control bodies if employees’ health is endangered at work
• Keeping proper documentation on OHS provided to the employer, separately from employee medical records
• Informing employees during exit medical examinations about subsequent medical examinations as per public health law
• Issuing medical opinions based on health fitness assessments

OHS providers have the right to request that employers ensure measurements or expert assessments for analyzing working conditions including health risk categorization results, if there is suspicion of a change adversely affecting employees’ health. Employers are obliged to provide these measurements or assessments.

Medical Examinations

Entry medical examination – conducted before employment or a change in job position to assess whether the candidate is medically fit to perform the work. For employees in category 1 risk jobs who are not employed under short-term agreements, entry examinations may not be mandatory if legal conditions are met.

Periodic examinations – conducted at regular intervals depending on the risk category of the job.

Extraordinary examinations – arranged in specific cases such as suspected occupational disease or when ordered by public health authorities under the law.

Only these examinations assess medical fitness to work and form the basis for issuing medical opinions on fitness. The requirements for medical opinions are specified by regulations on medical documentation and occupational health services.

Exit examinations – conducted to assess the employee’s health upon termination of employment with emphasis on health changes during employment.

Regular Supervision

Regular supervision at workplaces and work performance focuses on identifying and assessing risk factors and proposing measures to eliminate them and improve working conditions.

Supervision frequency depends on the job category and associated risks and must be conducted at least once every 3 years for category 2, 3, and 4 jobs.

What iTutor offers in the area of OHS

iTutor LMS offers many functions related to OHS through the iTutor Medical Fitness module. This module allows you to record so-called health fitness requirements for various job positions, define how they are obtained and renewed, record the procedures leading to acquisition, and link everything with qualifications and their acquisition in iTutor Qualifications.

Health Fitness

In iTutor Medical Fitness, health fitness can be categorized using groups, specializations, and fields, allowing detailed configuration of which job position or profession the fitness applies to. Validity periods and email notification intervals for employees and their managers before expiration can be set. Health fitness can fulfill qualifications, and together with training courses, form a comprehensive qualification tracking system for specific jobs or positions.

Examinations

Health fitness is fulfilled in iTutor through so-called examinations. Various registers can be set up for examination input, such as a list of examiners, types of exams, final evaluations, and restrictions, greatly simplifying the administration process in iTutor. Examinations can be recorded by company physicians, external OHS providers, or authorized employer personnel, always based on assigned permissions within the iTutor LMS.

Certificates

Entering an examination automatically generates a health fitness certificate, i.e., a medical opinion whose appearance is fully configurable within iTutor. The certificate can contain examination results, company logos, scanned doctor’s signatures, validity information, etc.

In practice, there are cases when examination results cannot be entered into iTutor immediately after the exam, due to connection issues, time constraints, or other reasons. iTutor accommodates such situations by allowing advance printing of pre-filled certificates with patient details. The doctor can fill out the paper form during the exam, and the values can be entered into iTutor later along with a scanned paper certificate.

Clinics

iTutor also offers a separate Clinics application that manages a list of cooperating medical clinics including opening hours. Employees, their managers, or administrators with rights can schedule appointments for examinations required for specific health fitness needs related to their job position—whether entry, periodic, or other examinations. The Clinics app is integrated with iTutor’s email system, sending confirmation emails and calendar invitations upon booking.

Implementation

The described ecosystem of health fitness, examinations, qualifications, and so on has been implemented for numerous clients in telecommunications, manufacturing, finance, and other sectors. In all cases, the implementation created centralized tracking of all necessary parameters in one system, saving time managing the entire agenda.
Here is one example: