Kontakt 2011, 13(2):166-176 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2011.021

Results of proceedings of appeal concerning occupational diseases at the Centre of Occupational Diseases, Hospital České Budějovice, a. s. in 2005 to 2009Health and Social Sciences - Original article

Eva Cepáková^*, Aleš Hejlek

Nemocnice České Budějovice, a. s., oddělení pracovního lékařství

The target of the work presented here was the evaluation of decisions of the proceedings of appeal concerning occupational diseases (including occupational injuries) issued by the section of social affairs and healthcare of the Regional Office of the South Bohemian Region in 2005-2009. The data necessary were accumulated by processing the medical documentation kept at the Centre of Occupational Diseases, Hospital České Budějovice, a. s. In our work, we also considered legal aspects of occupational diseases and proceedings of appeal. Over the considered five-year period, at our department, we solved total of 111 appeals concerning occupational diseases, out of them 69 appeals of employers and 42 appeals of employees. The appeals particularly concerned workers (men or women) in the production of basic metals and metallurgical products. The following diagnoses occurred most frequently: right carpal tunnel syndrome and right radial epicondylitis of the humerus according to "the List of Occupational Diseases", Chapters II/9 and II/10. The section of social affairs and healthcare cancelled contested medical opinions of the Department of Occupational Medicine and returned the subject matter to the issue of a new medical opinion in total of 34 cases. They refused the contest and supported the medical opinion contested in 75 cases. The reasons for the medical opinion cancellation were hygienic in 24 cases, clinical in 9 cases and both clinical and hygienic in one case. The results of our examination indicate that the most frequent reason for the medical opinion cancellation were diseases due to long-term excess one-sided overload: in 20 cases for hygienic reasons of the evaluation of this load, i.e. 58.8% of all the cancelled medical opinions, in 4 cases for clinical reasons, i.e. 11.8% of all the cancelled medical opinions. Among 34 returned cases, there were 7 justified cases of appeal. This makes 6.3% of the total number of all the cases of appeal. In five and two cases, there were justified appeals of employees and employers, respectively. In the conclusion of our work, we first considered certain characteristics of the sample group examined and their associations with results, with subsequent analysis of reasons for appeals of employees and employers and with emphasize put on their justification. We furthermore evaluated medical opinions cancelled by the superior administrative office and considered their most frequent reasons. We discuss the importance of the proceedings of appeal in association with the resulting number of justified cases of appeal. We always try to find solutions of these problems leading to as low number of cases of appeal as possible, provided that no party will be damaged by our decision.

Keywords: Centre of Occupational Diseases; appeal; medical opinion; occupational disease; employee; employer

Received: October 14, 2010; Accepted: May 6, 2011; Published: June 20, 2011  Show citation