Occupational Health Records
I wonder if any one can help: Our Occupational Health screening service is coming back within the County Council after being outsourced for a number of years. The company that used to administer our OH screening service is sending all the pre employment questionnaires for the County Council back to us.
First of all, does anyone have any guidelines re how long pre employment questionnaires have to be kept for?
Secondly, our occupational health staff have raised concerns that, according to legislation, pre employment questionnaires have to be stored in a locked cabinet in a locked room and they are having quite a debate surrounding the definition of 'locked' in relation to our RM storage facility. Our RM store is within the County Council Record Office building. Keypad doors control access to storage areas when the office is open. Only Record Office staff have access to the storage areas. The RM repository itself is not locked during the day but is at night when the building is secured. I have suggested that boxes containing OH pre employment questionnaires could be sealed with tamper evident tape as an additional security measure for these boxes of records (my thinking is that this would show evidence of someone trying to tamper with the records as much as a forced lock on a filing cabinet for example).
Would these two measures (keypad locks to storage areas & tamper evident sealing of boxes) be adequate storage for pre employment health questionnaires - and would this also be adequate for the storage of more detailed OH patient records in the future?
With many thanks * replies on or off list will be gratefully received,
Vicky.
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Vicky Stretch
Records Management Officer
North Yorkshire County Council
Record Office
Tel: 01609 777585
Fax: 01609 777078
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