Every year, tens of thousands of men and women across the United States are severely injured on the job, sometimes with permanent consequences to themselves and their families. But until last year OSHA lacked timely information about where and how most of those injuries were occurring, limiting how effectively the agency could respond.
OSHA instituted new reporting requirements, effective January 1, 2015, requiring employers to report to OSHA within 24 hours any work-related amputation, in-patient hospitalization, or loss of eye, with two goals in mind:
1. Enable the agency to better target our compliance assistance and enforcement efforts to places where workers are at greatest risk, and;
2. Engage more high-hazard employers in identifying and eliminating serious hazards.
OSHA has released Year One of OSHA’s Severe Injury Reporting Program: An Impact Evaluation, showing results from 2015. Experience in the field and data from more than 10,000 reports of severe injuries in 2015 indicate that both goals are being met. Results from the first year of severe injury reporting demonstrate the program’s success in both helping OSHA focus its resources where most needed, and engaging employers to identify and eliminate serious hazards at their workplaces.
OSHA will continue to evaluate the program and make changes to improve its effectiveness.