Recording Open Ended Sickness Episodes

If you have a member of your team who is unfortunately going to be unwell for an undetermined amount of time, you can record this as an Open Ended Sickness episode within HealthRoster / Optima. This will instruct the system to automatically extend this episode during overnight processes, until you confirm an end date.

Whether this option shows is determined by whether the episode goes past the current date, e.g., if you add a sickness for yesterday (as of the day you are adding), the tick box will not show. Once you increase the duration to at least 2 days, inclusive of the current date, you will then see the Open Ended tick box appear:

Once you tick this, the system will initially automatically extend the entry by approx. 2 weeks:

You can edit the end date at any time if you wish to extend further; un-tick the tick box, amend the end date, re-tick, then save.

Once there is a confirmed end date for the episode, you must un-tick the tick box, enter this confirmed end date and save the entry.

As per regular process, if your unit shows in the eRoster reminder email as having unfinalised unavailabilities, always check that no entries are left unfinalised, or part finalised. Part finalised entries will show this icon:  and will still prevent the upload of all unavailabilities on the roster in question to ESR.

If the team member has to leave the trust due to the long-term sickness, you must ensure that the tick-box is unticked and the end date is set as their final leaving date, i.e., the leave date on their R-form after taking into account any outstanding leave to be taken.

Overall, we hope this process will alleviate the past issue of a long-term sickness episode being uploaded to ESR with an incorrect early end date.

For regular short-term sicknesses, continue to record as you normally would.