Medical treatment is care that health professionals provide to help, improve, cure or relieve illness, injury and/or disease through the use of procedures, systematic therapeutic measures and/or medication. It may include diagnostic measures such as blood tests, imaging and surgery. It can also involve non-invasive or minimally invasive therapeutic procedures such as acupuncture, physiotherapy and massage. Some procedures are preventative in nature, such as tetanus and flu shots, and others are first aid like the application of ointments or salves to minor cuts, scratches and first degree burns.
Doctors weigh the benefits and risks of each available treatment and explain those to their patients. They ask their patients about their lifestyle and preferences and share personal information with them. They will often discuss the results of research studies, but those studies can’t guarantee that a treatment will work the same in every patient and may not even apply to the patient in question.
As medicine advances, there is a danger that the availability of more effective treatments will encourage doctors to apply them to all sorts of cases that would previously have been classed as ‘normal’. For example, the development of better treatments for diabetes and high blood pressure means that many more people are now labelled as diabetic or hypertensive than would have been the case without these new drugs.
A good doctor will try to keep the amount of time and money spent on medical treatment to a minimum, making sure that it is really necessary and will produce real benefit for their patients. This requires them to be wary of labels and proposed further investigations that will not only impose expense on their patients but also increase the risk that they will end up with unnecessary and sometimes dangerous treatment.
The definition of a ‘medical treatment’ is very broad and includes any procedure for the diagnosis or treatment of any physical or mental illness, infirmity or defect. For this reason, a variety of things that could be beneficial for the health and well-being of an employee fall outside the scope of this exemption, such as HIV and HBV antibody testing (though counselling for related bloodborne exposures would).
Whether or not a particular procedure is classified as medical treatment will usually be clear-cut. In some cases, however, the exact wording and context of a policy or law will determine whether it applies. This is particularly true of the rules governing an employer’s liability for costs associated with helping employees return to work following periods of sickness absence. For this reason, it is important that an employee understands the terms and conditions of their health and safety scheme before agreeing to have any medical treatment arranged by their employer. This will include details about how the expense will be incurred and what is and is not covered by it.