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APPENDIX B
STAFF—SURVEY OF LONG-TERM SICKNESS 1961/63
Introduction
1. The Medical Officer of Health is responsible for the medical examination of the
Council's staff:
(i) as to fitness for appointment to the Council's service;
(ii) after a prolonged period of sickness;
(iii) after an accident on duty, and
(iv) when physical fitness to remain in the Council's service is in question.
There are also other minor aspects—eligibility for spouse pension, confinement leave,
etc. In practice, staff on sick leave are normally referred for examination after two months'
absence and after one month's absence arising from an accident on duty. Earlier arrangements
apply in the case of staff reported to be suffering from tuberculosis and cases are
occasionally referred earlier when physical fitness to remain in the service is under consideration.
Method
2. In 1960 a pilot scheme for the indexing on punched cards of cases referred for
medical examination was introduced and this was extended and made permanent in 1961.
The prime purpose of the system is to provide an alphabetical index of all the cases,
containing particulars of age, sex, grade, reason for examination, diagnosis and outcome:
the system also provides statistics required for administrative purposes. It was decided to
explore the potentialities of this scheme by carrying out a limited analysis of long-term
absence from work owing to sickness (item (ii) above), for the years 1961/63 inclusive—
limited because of inability to obtain all the requisite supplemental data as instanced
below.
3. A major difficulty encountered was in the ascertainment of the ' exposed to risk'
population for the various grades of staff employed by age and sex. In the case of some
grades, information was obtained of the numbers of staff employed in mid-1964 from a
computer tabulation of salaried staff by age group and sex, supplemented by manual
methods in the case of weekly paid staff. This information was readily available from
computer sources because the first two digits of the L.C.C. Superannuation and Provident
Fund number allocated to each member of the staff are the year of birth of the staff
concerned. In a few instances where individuals were not on the Council's Superannuation
Fund the information was obtained by reference to departmental sources. In the case of
firemen and teachers, both of which grades have special superannuation schemes, the
information was not obtainable from this source as the national superannuation schemes
for these two grades of staff do not employ a numbering system incorporating year of birth.
For Fire Brigade personnel a manual count was made of all records of the uniformed staff.
With teachers, owing to the large numbers concerned (over 20,000), a manual count was
made on a sample basis from records maintained in the Education Officer's department:
one card in every five was sampled. Hence the numbers of teachers shown as employed
always ends in the figure 5 or 0, because the sample results had to be multiplied by five to
equate them to the actual numbers in the Council's service. As it was not possible to obtain
easily the numbers of other grades of staff by age and sex, the analysis was limited to
A.P.T. and C. grades (administrative, professional, technical and clerical grades within the
purview of the L.C.C. Interim Panel), teachers, nursing staff (including health visitors and
midwives), Fire Brigade and Ambulance Service uniformed staff.
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