OSHA Recordkeeping Value Proposition

Work-Related Injury/Illness Reporting

The Total Cost for Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses

According to the statistics reported by the National Safety Council in its 2001 "Injury Facts" publication, for every 25 work days lost in 2000 due to an injury, 16 of those days were from injuries that occurred in 2000 and 9 of those days were from injuries that occurred in prior years.

For every 6 lost workdays avoided in the current year, you are also avoiding 4.5 lost workdays in future years.

The average cost for a disabling work-related injury in 2000 was $28,000. This cost includes estimates of wage losses, medical expenses, administrative expenses, and employer costs but does not include property damage costs other than motor vehicles and fire losses. Employer costs include the values of time lost by workers other than those with disabling injuries, cost of time to investigate injuries, write up injury reports, etc. and includes damage to motor vehicles and fire losses related to the injury event.

The average worker compensation claim in 1998-1999 was $10,610.

Uninsured costs a company bears related to disabling injuries: It's not just worker compensation and medical expenses.

Most companies estimate that, conservatively, for every $1 of direct costs associated with a work-related accident - worker compensation and medical expenses - at least $4 of indirect, uninsured costs are born by the company.

For your company's work-related injuries, calculate these indirect costs to get an estimate of the total cost of accidents to your company:

Consider the total cost of accidents when calculating your return on an investment in a system that helps you to manage and track those activities which can have a positive impact and reduce the frequency and severity of your work-related injuries. What is the return on your investment in a system that helps you to reduce administrative time and spend more time on the activities that can have a positive impact in your drive to reduce work-related injuries and illnesses?

The lower the direct cost of an accident, the higher the ratio of indirect costs (as reported by OSHA)

An OSHA study that indicates the indirect costs for smaller $$ amount claims/work-related injuries are at a much higher multiplier than higher $$ amount claims.

OSHA Recordkeeping

In the preamble to its Recordkeeping Rule, OSHA published the following time estimates of the administrative hours that will be required annually to develop and maintain the necessary OSHA logs and reports for a company.

OSHA used a $26/hour wage rate (with fringe benefits) to estimate the Administrative Cost of recordkeeping

From OSHA's recordkeeping rule revisions: estimates OSHA used to determine impact of revised recordkeeping guidelines which became effective JAN 2002. Publication Date: 01/19/2001. Publication Type: Final Rules. Federal Register 66:5916-6135. Standard Number: 1904; 1952. Title: Occupational Injury and Illness Recording and Reporting Requirements.

The experience of Safetylogic's clients shows that moving from a paper-based manual system to an automated, computer-based system that includes the transfer or worker compensation claim data to Safetylogic's OSHA recordkeeping module can reduce administrative time for OSHA recordkeeping by upwards of 80%...

Data Transfer and Consolidation

Eliminating the need to manually enter the same data that was provided to your worker compensation carrier into the forms needed for OSHA recordkeeping purposes would reduce the administrative time spent on such OSHA compliance efforts. Additionally, the quality of the data will be improved, as transcription errors will be eliminated. With your worker compensation carrier supplying a data feed at least twice weekly (preferably daily), your staff will be alerted via e-mail when new incidents for their location(s) have been reported. Once the reported incident is reviewed and submitted to the Safetylogic system, the location's OSHA Form 301 and 300 are automatically updated. A current OSHA Form 300 can be generated quickly whenever needed, either at the request of an OSHA officer or to meet the annual posting requirements.

The Cost of Time

Reducing the time between when an accident happens and when it gets reported and investigated saves money. With automatic data transfer there is the additional benefit of elimination of the errors due to transcription. One company's estimate is that for every day the occurred-to-investigated window is shortened, the company saves at least $900 on every incident.