Free guide · Monitoring
Monitoring reports, and whose job they are
Somewhere in your monitoring contract is a list of reports that have to go in about you, on a schedule, for years. A workplace monitor turning in monthly or quarterly reports. Ongoing therapy turning in, usually, a monthly report.
Other people write them. Other people send them. And that’s exactly what makes this page necessary.
Whose job are the reports?
Yours. These reports are our responsibility. They aren’t the responsibility of the person writing them.
If all of a sudden six months go by, and none of your therapy reports are going in, that’s going to be put on you as a participant. Not on the therapist. “Well, my therapist didn’t turn them in, there’s nothing I can do about that” doesn’t work here, and I understand the urge to say it. At some point it feels like it shouldn’t be your job. It’s your job anyway.
Why it works that way
There are too many people in the monitoring programs, and too few staff at the health programs, for them to stay on top of all of this. Nobody’s watching your file month to month. Nobody calls to say a report didn’t arrive.
The system finds the gap late. And when it finds it, it’s your gap.
It happens even when everyone’s doing their job
I’m not speaking hypothetically. My psychiatrist and I had this ongoing thing: I’m seeing them, they claim they’re writing the report, and the physician health program is claiming they don’t have it. There had to be some deeper investigation.
And really and truly, it was on me anyway, because it’s on us to make sure these reports get turned in.
The check that prevents all of it
Every so often, it’s worth a check with your program: hey, am I up to date on reports? Are you missing any? Is everybody turning their stuff in? Just so you don’t wind up with a large gap that you suddenly have to go back and reconstruct.
The monitoring contract page shows how to build a checklist from your own contract and run it monthly, or quarterly at the least. The reports belong on that list, every one of them.
What only your contract answers about reports
Which reports yours requires, and from whom. How often each one goes in. Who your workplace monitor is, and what their report covers. What your program does when one is missing.
Those genuinely vary. The responsibility doesn’t; that part is the same everywhere.