Clinical governance and assurance in occupational health tenders
- Dr Lara Shemtob
- 20 hours ago
- 4 min read
What is clinical governance?
Clinical governance is a framework that ensures healthcare organisations are accountable for maintaining and improving high standards of care.
What is clinical quality assurance?
Clinical quality assurance is the systematic process of ensuring healthcare services, including digital health services and infrastructure and clinical research are safe, effective, ethical and compliant with regulations.
Why do these concepts matter to occupational health tenders?
An invitation to tender is a formal process in which a buyer invites service providers to submit bids to deliver a service under specified terms and conditions. Buyers should set out their expectations around clinical governance and clinical quality assurance clearly so providers can work within scope to generate high quality bids.
Clinical governance and clinical quality assurance are a particularly important part of this process because occupational health services operate at the intersection of:
Clinical care
Employment law
Organisational risk
The way these concepts overlap is essential to understand when looking to bring in occupational health support. Without high standards of care that are safe, effective, ethical and compliant, organisations will be exposed to clinical risk, organisational risk and legal risk. All of this comes with an impact on workforce health, organisational productivity and reputational damage.
What does good looks like when it comes to clinical governance and assurance?
For a provider to deliver on clinical governance and assurance they should be able to evidence how consistently high standards of care are achieved in their bid. Examples include:
Clinical leadership and supervision structures with escalation routes for the entire OH service, whether a hybrid or remote workforce, whether employed staff or contractors, across the multidisciplinary team managing a range of client risk profiles
Use and adherence to defined standards such as Faculty of Occupational Medicine (FOM) ethics guidance
Processes to manage disagreements between stakeholders including the OH team, managers and employees on occupational health recommendations
Clear polices on what is audited, how and when, including what happens when risks are identified or incidents take place
Transparent quality indicators and outcome measures
What is SEQOHS and how does it fit into clinical governance and assurance?
SEQOHS stands for safe, effective, quality occupational health service.
It is a UK wide accreditation scheme overseen by the Faculty of Occupational Medicine (FOM) and recognised by NHS bodies, local authorities, and large employers.
SEQOHS accreditation confirms that an OH service meets defined standards across clinical quality, governance, and organisational performance. The standards to be met are developed through stakeholder consultation and cross six domains.
Some examples: The Governance and Finance domain specifies that all health professionals delivering clinical services are registered with the relevant regulatory body.
The Resources and Processes domain specifies that vaccines are stored in a dedicated and appropriately maintained vaccine refrigerator.
Looking through the SEQOHS standards in full demonstrates where a SEQOHS accredited provider has been through benchmarking which therefore helps triangulate quality.
Is SEQOHS accreditation enough?
While SEQOHS demonstrates occupational health services have been independently assessed against national standards, with compliance with governance standards at that point in time, it does not mean that occupational health services are perfect with no further assurance or monitoring needed. Once awarded, SEQOHS accreditation is valid for five years with annual checks.
Buyers could consider SEQOHS as a minimum quality threshold or shortlisting requirement that demonstrates clinical governance maturity. When certain buyers, such as some UK public services, are putting together an invitation to tender, they may restrict bids to those coming from SEQOHS accredited providers only. Strong bids for tender will go further to provide evidence on how SEQOHS standards are operationalised day to day.
Are there any other relevant accreditations?
Yes, there are other relevant accreditations across domains that intersect with occupational health provision. Information security standards are an example. Providers might demonstrate compliance with external internationally agreed security standards, such as the ISO27001 standard. Again, looking for third party accreditation is helpful but not necessarily exhaustive. In occupational health there are various layers of information governance from a health data perspective, with the additional aspects associated with keeping employee health data separate from the workplace.
In summary:
Governance and clinical quality assurance should be top of mind as a buyer putting together an invitation to tender.
Evidence of governance and clinical quality assurance should go beyond policies to demonstrate implementation and outcomes.
Leaning on third party standards such as SEQOHS and ISO is definitely helpful but these are not exhaustive either within or across domains and may not demonstrate service changes between benchmarking points.
How Insight Workplace Health Supports Safe, High-Quality Occupational Health
Choosing an occupational health provider is not just a procurement decision. It is a decision that affects clinical safety, legal risk, workforce wellbeing, and organisational reputation.
At Insight Workplace Health, clinical governance and quality assurance sit at the core of how we deliver occupational health services. Our SEQOHS-accredited service is underpinned by robust clinical leadership, clear supervision and escalation pathways, transparent audit processes, and adherence to recognised professional and ethical standards.
We work with organisations to deliver occupational health support that is safe, effective, ethical, and fit for purpose, and we are open about how our governance frameworks operate in practice, not just on paper.
If you are developing an invitation to tender, reviewing your current occupational health provision, or seeking assurance around clinical governance and quality standards, we would be happy to discuss how our services can support your organisation.
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