Section 7.3 Medical Screening in California?

Hello Everyone,

 

How are people handling the medical screening section of BRC in California? I am going to put not applicable due to state laws. It's illegal to request a medical screening in California.... Will auditors have a problem with this?

 

 

Breann  

Bre, At my facility we dont do any Medical screening. We handle meeting this standard through our GMP "Personnel Practices" training for both our employees and visitors. Employees are prohibited from working with food or food ingredients if there is a resonable potential of products becoming contaminated. Any cuts or abrasions must be covered with suitable dressings. Employees must report any such health issues/conditions to thier supervisors. If an employees is out for more then a few days, he or she must have a medical note stating they are "ok" to return to work. With all the HIPAA laws in the US it makes it very illegal to ask for specific details on an employees health, the best we can do is to put policies and procedures together to protect us and our products from this type of contamination.

Jpredmore,

 

Thanks for the information. I will refer to my personal hygiene standard policy to cover this section. I mention all of the above details in it. :spoton:

Hi Bre,

 

This topic seems to surface quite often in the forums. One of the issues here in the states is that as food processors we are required to obtain GFSI certification. The GFSI standards all indicate "medical screening" as a requirement. In many parts of the world, it may be commonplace for employers (especially in the food industry) to abide by this requirements while here in the N. America, we are stuck between a GFSI requirement and the HIPAA Act (as pointed out by JPredmore).

 

You can see further discussion on this topic in this thread (though it was for our Canadian neighbors):

http://www.ifsqn.com...ning#entry56623

 

I have been through BRC certification several times with a few different large companies, and I have always "risk assessed" this clause rather than opening the company up to litigation. if you are going to risk assess this clause, you might point out that this particular clause can be satisfied by way of training your employees and enforcing the FDA cGMP regulations 21CFR110 (http://www.accessdat...h.cfm?fr=110.10). Taking into account that HIPAA privacy law limits what you can and can't ask your employees, the FDA has put the onus onto the employee themselves to make their supervisors aware of any illness or communicable disease. Make sure this topic is touched on during training and enforced while in commercial operation.

 

Good luck, Breann!

According to our last audit (SQF 7 Level 2), the Medical Screening does not have to be done by someone in the medical profession. We have a form that the floor supervisor fills out before each shift, verifying that they have 'Screened' each employee for "runny noses, open wounds, bla bla bla . . . “.

 

Hope this helps