Australis Medical provides a variety of services to a number of corporate clients. 

These range from full provision of occupational health infrastructure and services through to consulting advice and contract research.

We specialize in policy and protocol development for Occupational Health services, including risk management, case management, wellness programs, and Occupational health system infrastructure.  We pride ourselves on developing an intimate knowledge of our client companies and their worksites, and maintaining excellent communications with all involved parties, from management to unions to other involved medical professionals.  Therefore we can provide dedicated medical services for our client companies, including on-call advice by phone and email, injury management consultations, rehabilitation, and fitness for work assessments.

We also have a network of specialists that we can refer to for further care, including those specialised in Occupational Psychiatry, Alcohol and Drug Treatment, Sleep disorders, Orthopaedics, Cardiology, and many others.  Throughout our care of clients we ensure that all confidentiality is respected while maintaining good communication with the workplace.

Drug and Alcohol Management Programs
We aslo specialise in development and implementation of best-practice Drug and Alcohol Management Programs, using physicians qualified as Australasian Medical Review Officers.  This service includes policy and protocol development, training of staff, management of testing, review of results, and management of any rehabilitation processes.  As noted by the Australasian Medical Review Officers Association:

Why should organisations use the services of a Medical Review Officer?
A&OD programs are intrinsically medical in nature. Employers and the general public tend to focus on testing and see it in simple terms i.e. “you do a test and it is either positive or negative – end of story”. However it is not as simple as that.

A&OD programs are much broader than just testing, and can touch upon the fields of pathology, physiology, biochemistry, psychology and psychiatry which require medical input. Programs also have ethical, privacy, legal and industrial relations implications.

Some companies in Australia still run A&OD programs without the input from an MRO. The results are usually sent from the laboratory to a manager, or perhaps a HR or OHS representative who then interpret them and make determinations which can have serious consequences for employees and the organisation.

Some issues for of concerns for these companies are:

• Unqualified review of results possibly resulting in false positives or negatives. 
• Legal defensibility of test results may be poor. 
• Inadequate return to work processes following positive cases may not reduce the A&OD risk for that
  company or be legally defensible should safety be compromised again. 
• Employees may return to work with other fitness for duty issues not identified. 
• Industrial and privacy implications of test results being handled by managers, HR or OHS personnel.
  MRO input into a Program overcomes these issues, ensures an overall quality process, which preserves the rights of employees while at the same time, being effective in reducing the risk to the company from A&OD misuse
  Industrially, unions are more willing to accept A&OD programs which have MRO oversight. 
  

If you would like to know more about our services, please contact us for more information.