A resource unit, not a physical consultation room
The UBS describes professional staffing. It is not the name of a premises or an authorisation to provide any healthcare service. A prevention service’s health activities have requirements concerning organisation, staff, facilities and authorisation.
Also distinguish a company’s in-house service from an external service supporting several companies. The reference to a UBS should not be interpreted as requiring every small company individually to employ two full-time professionals without considering its preventive arrangements and organisation.
Professions and technical leadership
Royal Decree 843/2011 requires specialised technical leadership and appropriately qualified personnel. For medicine and nursing, Article 4 provides for specialist qualifications and the accepted company-health qualifications.
Practical checks include credentials, allocated time and actual duties. A nominal list of professionals is insufficient if their schedules do not allow delivery of the promised activities. When other specialists participate, their involvement must comply with competencies and counting rules, without replacing functions for which they are not qualified.
Size resources according to population and risks
The regulation relates resources to the workers covered, risks and time allocation. It establishes criteria and annexes for sizing, with specific features for in-house services and services covering multiple companies.
Do not use a simple division of people by daily examinations as the complete calculation. Include planning, collective surveillance, analysis of results and coordination. Consider dispersed sites and task characteristics. Authorisation and verification of resource sizing belong to the applicable framework and competent authority, rather than an isolated commercial estimate.
Which activities it must be able to perform
The Prevention Services Regulation links health activities to specific risks, health assessments, study of relationships between exposure and harm, and proposals for measures. It does not limit them to issuing certificates.
Allocate time to understand jobs and work with other preventive disciplines. A schedule occupied exclusively by consultations may leave collective interpretation or exposure review unattended. Check that the programme explains which activities will be performed, for which population and with which resources.
Information, coordination and confidentiality
The organisation needs healthcare access to sufficient occupational information and a secure route for communicating preventive conclusions. Limits on access to clinical data remain even when the service is part of the company itself.
Define channels with prevention teams, site managers and workers. Distinguish healthcare communications from administrative notices. If activities are contracted with other services, review the legal conditions for collaboration and who retains responsibility for planning and follow-up; do not assume that everything can be outsourced indiscriminately.
Hypothetical example: growth without added capacity
A service starts covering new sites with different risks. It checks that the increase does not merely add appointments: it also requires understanding exposures and developing collective surveillance for other activities.
It reviews staffing, schedules and its programme against the applicable criteria. It strengthens resources and coordination before accepting commitments incompatible with capacity. The review reveals an organisational problem that would have remained hidden if only the examinations performed each month had been counted.
