Stone, McElroy & Associates early client base was exclusively law enforcement and other public safety organizations, such as fire, corrections, emergency medical, emergency communication and related organizations. Although the largest segment of our client base continues to be public safety organizations, our private sector activities have been steadily growing over the years. Stone, McElroy & Associates has performed evaluations for hospitals, media production companies, the aviation industry, computer software firms, and even companies providing heating and air conditioning services.
While our clients have included a vast array of organizations, the common factor is that they all represent an entity that has a perceived responsibility for the behavior and performance of individuals who represent them. That said, the major categories of entities we serve include:
Police Departments, Sheriff's Departments, Fire and Emergency Medical Services, Correctional Agencies, Emergency Communications, Court Services, Governmental Investigative Units.
Major services we provide:
Contract security providers, health care organizations, transportation industry
Any organization - public or private, manufacturing or service, large or small - experience periodic crises that may require the use of outside psychological consultants and evaluators, whether the situation be a threat of violence by an employee, alleged but unsubstantiated harassment of one employee by another, a poor performing employee's demanding entitlement for an alleged mental disability, and many other kinds of issues requiring the application of forensic risk management methods.
Employers frequently ask for risk-related determinations from an employee's personal health care provider, a request that very often places the health provider, the employer, and the employee in an awkward, sometimes conflicted and often confusing, situation. For health providers, including personal doctors, organizational EAP's and industrial clinics, their role is to provide care for their patients. When these entities provide information to employers about an employee's work status, they are being asked to assume a different role that at times could be in significant conflict with their role as advocate for their patient. Moreover, they may be asked to make determinations in areas where they lack specific expertise or where the information available is limited or uncertain.
In such instances, rather than engaging in risk-management activities, mental health providers can seek a third party assessment of their patient directly from Stone, McElroy & Associates or refer the employer to us. This strategy allows the health provider to maintain the role of advocate and health provider for their patient while also responding to the patient's need to provide medical conclusions related to their ability to perform their job to their employer. This structure not only helps the provider to maintain appropriate focus on the patient but also protects the provider from undermining the doctor-patient relationship through communications that are perceived as adversarial to their interest. This also helps protect the provider from the potential liability that might accrue if, in putting the patient back to work, there is a disastrous outcome for the employee-patient and/or to third parties.
For example, if an employee's doctor signs a return to work letter, it is often not clear what the implications of the clearance are, what the conclusions are based upon, and whether the return to work permission is taking the liability interests of the employer into consideration. That is, an employee's health care provider may have no risk assessment or forensic background, may know little about the demands of their patient's job, and may have very limited information about actual risk-relevant circumstances on the job. Seldom do communications from health providers indicate the basis for job-relevant recommendations, their level of expertise on the demands of the job, or even whether a recommendation is being made in the interest of the employee, the employer, or both.
In-house or external counsel handling personnel matters on behalf of governments or organizations.
