Your employee health records outlive the employment by decades, and the filing system does not.
Employee health TB tracking is the work of screening staff for tuberculosis, recording the results, managing exposures and work restrictions, and keeping those records for as long as the law requires. In healthcare settings the record is expected to hold medical evaluations, infectious disease screening, evidence of immunity and immunisation, and exposure management together. Retention is measured in decades rather than years, which is the part most systems get wrong.
Neurobird Employee Health TB Tracking in short
- Record screening results and immunity evidence against the individual, with the dates they were taken.
- Link an exposure to the work restriction it produced, so the roster reflects the clinical decision.
- Apply retention that runs beyond employment rather than ending with it.
- 30 years An employee medical record must be preserved for at least the duration of employment plus thirty years. OSHA 1910.1020
- 30 years Employee exposure records carry their own thirty year retention period, separate from the medical record. OSHA 1910.1020
- Pricing runs 140 to 760 US dollars per month across 3 tiers. Early access is free.
What hospitals and healthcare employers actually deal with
Why it stays broken
Human resources systems retain for employment. Clinical systems retain for care. The federal rule retains for the duration of employment plus thirty years, and it applies whether or not the record was mandated by a specific standard. That is a longer horizon than most systems are designed around, and an employee health record can therefore be lawfully required years after every system that held it was replaced.
30 years beyond the end of employment is the minimum retention for an employee medical record under the federal access rule.
The employer shall also distribute to current employees any informational materials concerning this section which are made available to the employer by the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health.
How does Neurobird Employee Health TB Tracking work?
Screen
Screening, immunity evidence and evaluations attach to the person, so currency is a property of the record rather than a search through files.
Respond
An exposure opens a managed record, and any work restriction produced by it is communicated to the systems that schedule the person.
Retain
Records stay under a retention clock measured from the end of employment, because that is how the federal rule measures it.
Neurobird Employee Health TB Tracking Client Portal
Hold screening, exposure and restriction records against the person, on a retention clock that matches the rule rather than the payroll system.
- 1Record screening results and immunity evidence against the individual, with the dates they were taken.
- 2Link an exposure to the work restriction it produced, so the roster reflects the clinical decision.
- 3Apply retention that runs beyond employment rather than ending with it.
- 4Answer an access request without assembling the record from three separate systems.
What changes with Neurobird Employee Health TB Tracking?
The same work, read left to right: how it runs today, and how it runs once the record is in one place.
| Today | With Neurobird Employee Health TB Tracking |
|---|---|
| Screening results are held in a personnel file that is cleared out when the employee leaves | Record screening results and immunity evidence against the individual, with the dates they were taken. |
| An exposure is managed clinically and the resulting work restriction never reaches the roster that actually needs to act on it | Link an exposure to the work restriction it produced, so the roster reflects the clinical decision. |
| Nobody can say which staff are currently up to date on screening without opening every single file individually | Apply retention that runs beyond employment rather than ending with it. |
Who is this for?
Three ways a compliant screening programme still loses its record.
The record that outlived the system
Employee medical records must be kept for at least the duration of employment plus thirty years. Most personnel systems are not designed to hold anything that long, so the obligation survives the software that was holding it.
Restriction that never reached the roster
CDC guidance expects systems to communicate work restrictions with other organisational data systems. A restriction recorded only in a clinical note is a restriction the scheduler cannot act on.
Answering an access request
Employers must assure employee access to their own medical records and to relevant exposure records on request. Meeting that promptly depends on the records being findable, which is a structural question rather than a policy one.
See it work
A short walk through screening, exposure and retention.
- Hold the retentionpending
- Record the screeningpending
- Manage any exposurepending
- Hold the retentionpending
Advance a step to see what the client sees.
What the numbers say about employee health TB tracking
The retention periods are unusually long and unusually specific. They are also the part of the obligation that fails silently.
An employee medical record must be preserved for at least the duration of employment plus thirty years.
OSHA 1910.1020Employee exposure records carry their own thirty year retention period, separate from the medical record.
OSHA 1910.1020Background data to workplace monitoring, such as laboratory reports and worksheets, need only be retained for one year where the results and methods are kept.
OSHA 1910.1020The rule applies to all employee exposure and medical records whether or not a specific standard required them to be created.
OSHA 1910.1020CDC guidance from 2019 sets out how healthcare personnel health records should be maintained and how work restrictions should flow to other systems.
CDC infection control guidanceEmployee health tb tracking software questions, answered
Key terms
- What is employee health TB tracking?
- It is the programme by which an employer screens staff for tuberculosis, records the results and any evidence of immunity, manages exposures when they happen, applies work restrictions where needed, and retains the resulting records. In healthcare settings the personnel health record is expected to bring medical evaluations, infectious disease screening, immunisation evidence and exposure management together rather than scattering them across clinical and personnel systems.
How long must employee health records be kept?
Longer than most people expect. Under the federal access rule an employee medical record must be preserved and maintained for at least the duration of employment plus thirty years, and employee exposure records carry their own thirty year period. Some narrow categories are excepted, and background data to workplace monitoring need only be kept for one year where the results and methods are retained. The practical consequence is that the obligation routinely outlives the system holding the record.
Does the rule only cover records a standard required?
No, and this catches people out. The section applies to all employee exposure and medical records and analyses of them, whether or not those records were mandated by a specific occupational safety and health standard. A record created voluntarily as good practice can therefore fall under the same retention and access duties as one created because a rule demanded it.
What should a healthcare personnel health record contain?
CDC guidance describes maintaining records and databases covering medical evaluations, infectious disease screening, evidence of immunity and immunisations, exposure and illness management, and work restrictions. It also expects systems to notify occupational health when services are due and to communicate work restrictions to other organisational systems, which is what turns a clinical decision into an operational one.
Is this available now?
No. It is in development and open for early access. We are building the retention and restriction model with occupational health teams in healthcare settings.
Why we are building this
Thirty years beyond the end of employment is a strange requirement to design software around, and that is exactly why it gets missed.
Personnel systems retain for employment. Clinical systems retain for care. Neither is built for an obligation that starts when someone leaves, and the failure is silent: nobody discovers the gap until a record is requested and cannot be produced.
So we are building the retention clock the rule actually describes. The Neurobird Team is starting with occupational health teams who have already been asked for something they could not find.
Where the requirement comes from
Primary sources, straight from the regulators.
- OSHA 1910.1020, access to employee exposure and medical records Retention periods and the employee right of access to their own records.
- OSHA, tuberculosis standards Which general industry standards apply to occupational TB exposure.
- CDC, management of healthcare personnel health records What a healthcare personnel health record is expected to contain and how it should flow.
How much does Neurobird Employee Health TB Tracking cost?
Early access pricing, held for the first 12 months for teams who help shape the build.
- Multiple sites
- Work restriction routing
- Access request export
Get free early access
We want occupational health leads who have tried to retrieve a record from a retired system.
Straight answer on where this is: The software is unfinished. Screening records, exposure management and retention clocks work. There is no HR system integration yet and archive export is early.
Prefer email? Write to office@neurobird.com and a person will reply. No autoresponder.