Helping a healthcare business to triple certification

OHWorks are a leading Occupational Health provider helping public and private sector organisations reduce workplace absence and improve employee wellbeing.

The challenge

Although the business was achieving excellent growth it faced four main challenges:

• To win public sector contracts OHWorks needed to demonstrate they had certified quality and information security management systems
• They serve contracts spread right accross the country and needed to create approved methods of work to reduce inconsistencies
• The business wanted to more clearly demonstrate occupational health and safety was at the core of their business
• They wanted to be sure that confidential patient data was being handled in the most secure way

The solution

OHWorks approached 2SB to work alongside them to help gain ISO 9001, ISO 27001 and ISO 45001 certification. Undertaking a triple certification is challenging for any business, however 2SB drew up a structured implementation programme to ensure that work was undertaken methodically and OHWorks had a clear idea of how each requirement could be integrated into their business.

It was clear from the outset that the two key areas of focus were going to be:

• The creation of simple processes to be clearly communicated to all staff and specialist healthcare professionals
• Processes to control the multiple channels through which sensitive personal data had to pass

It was decided to appoint an internal stakeholder for each area of the implementation: quality; information security; and occupational health & safety. 2SB worked with OHWorks on a rolling series of visits, two weeks apart to give direction to each stakeholder to progress actions in line with the agreed schedule.

The result

OHWorks achieved certification against ISO 9001, ISO 27001 and ISO 45001 on programme and without any nonconformances raised during the external audits. OHWorks Operations Manager commented:

"The support offered by 2SB was outstanding. Every session we had with them was well organised and really took the stress out of a very large project. As a growing business resources have to be dedicated to service delivery and we couldn't have achieved this without 2SB both taking some of the load off us, but more importantly challenging us to continually take steps forward.

Having them as an external consultant really forced us to stay on track and reach our objectives.As a business we are now in a much better position - staff understand the processes we expect them to follow, and we have confidence we are processing our patients data in compliance with legislation, medical codes of conduct and to the standards they deserve.

We are continuing our relationship with 2SB so we can continue to improve our systems and achieve controlled and sustainable growth"