011/15

Recommendation Date
Recipient Name
KiwiRail
Text
Rail workers are not required to give permission for rail medical officers to access medical records held by their private practitioners, which means the rail medical officers would not necessarily have access to all relevant medical information in order to determine their fitness for safety-critical duties.


The Commission recommends that the Chief Executive of KiwiRail introduce a system whereby KiwiRail medical professionals are automatically granted access to employees' medical records held by private medical practitioners as necessary to ensure employees who perform safety-critical roles are not impaired by prescription or over-counter medications.
Reply Text
The new recommendation is considered to be in-line with the other recommendations made in the report, and KiwiRail therefore accepts in principle this recommendation.

In order to achieve the new recommendation, it should be appreciated that other authorities will need to implement changes in order to provide the jurisdiction for allowing the disclosure of medical records held by private medical practitioners to be passed over to KiwiRail medical professionals.
Related Investigation(s)