Cases lost workday

Recordable nonfatal cases without lost workdays Cases of occupational injury or illness that do not involve fatalities or lost workdays but do result in (1) transfer to another job or termination of employment or (2) medical treatment other than first aid or (3) diagnosis of occupational illness or (4) loss of consciousness or (5) restriction of work or motion. 

The recent Burden of Skin Disease study, a joint project of the American Academy of Dermatology Association and the Society of Investigative Dermatology, found that the third most common skin ailment was contact dermatitis. According to this study, 72 million Americans had contact dermatitis in 2004 which resulted in 1.4 billion in direct costs and almost 500 million in indirect costs due to lost productivity.83 A review of 1993 BLS data showed that of 60,200 cases of occupational skin diseases, 12,613 (21%) resulted in one or more days away from work.70 The mean time away from work was 3 days, but 17% lost workday cases had over 11 days away from work. Of those with days away from work, 70% had a diagnosis of dermatitis. In 2001, of the 38,900 skin disease cases, 6,051 (16%) resulted in days away from work, with a median of 3 days lost.68 Of these, 78% had dermatitis. A study of 235 Canadian workers with oc-... 

Lost time accidents the lost workday case rate (LWCR) rose to a peak of approximately 0.7 injuries per 200000 in 1994, then fell steadily to 0.5 injuries per 200 000 in 1997. 

Lost time accidents between 1987 and 1999 the global frequency rate for lost workday cases fell from 2.5 cases per 100 employees peryearto 0.21 cases per 100 employees per year. The target for 2000 is 0.1. 

Then we compute incidence rates for Occupational Illness, Lost Workday Cases and Lost Workdays and compare these rates with the rates published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for workers in chemical and allied product manufacturing. 

Figure 1.1 Lost workday cases per 100 employees (fixed weight)...

Notes Incidence rate for the US lost workday cases per 100 full-time workers for Japan lost time injuries and illnesses per 200,000 hours worked. 

Number of Lost Workday Cases X 200,000 Total Hours Worked... 

In a major company with exceptionally good OSHA recordable and lost workday case rates, the chief executive officer declared that results were still not acceptable and that significant reductions in injuries and illnesses were to be made. The extensive and well-qualified staff of safety professionals convinced management to use incident investigation as one means of reinforcing its intent to achieve better results. 

A safety professional has to sign off on each completed report, as does the location manager. For a lost workday case, the location manager is required to report, personally, to the executive next upward in the reporting structure. 

My experience over many years has been that, in relation to their share of the employment population, maintenance workers had higher lost workday case rates (i.e., more severe injuries). To determine whether others... 

Data for such a graph would readily be available. While the rate of workers compensation claims reported will not match precisely a similar graph showing the OSHA recordable rate or the lost workday case rate, great differences should be a subject of concern. Such a graph would be a trend indicator and could provide an alert concerning situations that need attention. 

The actuarial premises on which the workers compensation experience rating system was developed give credibility to OSHA incident recordable and lost workday case rates as measures, and predictors, of safety performance, with these qualifications The statistical base (the hours worked) on which the records are developed has to be large enough and low probability-severe outcome risks may not be encompassed within the experience base. 

Do the OSHA statistics—the recordable case rate and the lost workday case rate —for an exposure of 1,000,000 hours have a confidence level of, say, 68.27%, as measures of the quality of safety performance An entity of this size would more than likely purchase workers compensation insurance and have an experience modification as an additional measure. 

The difference across large and small establishments in the frequency of lost workday cases... 

The conditional probability of a lost workday case given the fact that a chemical spiU accident was reported would then be calculated by ... 

When benchmarking safety performance, the safety manager identifies the organizations that can be considered the leaders in terms of various safety performances. One should keep in mind that while one organization can be considered the best in terms of lost workday cases, another company can be considered the best in another aspect of the safety program. The overall purpose and intent of benchmarking can be summarized as the (Holloway, Lewis, and Mallory 1995, 128) ... 

Days-away-from-work cases, which may also involve restricted workdays, are a subset of lost workday cases, which include days-away-from-work cases and cases involving restricted work activity only (Bureau of Labor Statistics 1997,72). 

The Department of Energy and its contractor injury and illness indicators include occupational injury and illness rates per 200,000 workhours for total recordable cases, lost workday cases, lost workdays, and occupational illnesses. In addition, the DOE has developed two measures used to quantify occupational injuries and illnesses. These measures are the ratio of Lost Workdays to Lost Workday Cases and the DOE Safety Cost Index (Training Resources and Data Exchange [TRADE] 1995,1-60-61). 

The ratio of lost workdays to lost workday cases represents a severity measure for the injuries and illnesses. The higher the ratio, the more days missed per case. The ratio is calculated using the following formula ... 

Ratio of Lost Workdays to Lost Workday Cases =... 

How is the DOE s ratio of lost workdays to lost workday cases calculated ... 

Companies and federal officials frequently utilize the following statistical pieces of information designed to allow the company to compare its safety and health performance with others the incident rate, illness rate, lost workday cases rate or severity rate, and restricted workday case rate. These rates, respectively, answer the questions of How often or frequently are accidents occurring and How bad are the injuries/illnesses that are occurring The number of times that occupational injuries/illnesses happen is the determinant for the incident rate, while the number of days away from work (lost-time workdays) or restricted workdays are the prime indicator of the severity rate. Both of these rates provide unique information regarding your safety and health effort. 

I asked Alan Hoskin, manager of the statistics department at the National Safety Council, whether the trending for lost workday cases with 31 or more days-away-from-work is statistically significant. He said it is. But, the lost workday case reporting rules on how days away from work are counted were revised by OSHA for 2002. Obviously, the trend data shown above need a closer look. Using the base data from the BLS reports for 1995-2001 and assuming the rules had not changed, Hoskin statistically projected numbers for 2002 and 2003. 

Table 2 shows the percent of days-away-from-work cases involving 31 or more days away from work for 2001, 2002 and 2003 as in the BLS reports and as projected by Hosking assuming no change had been made in the reporting ruled. For 2002 the projection for lost workday cases with 31 or more days away from work is 23.4%. In the BLS report for 2002 the recording is 25.1%. For 2003 the projection is 25.0%. The corresponding number in the BLS report on 2003 data is 26.2%. 

In February 2004, a study was made to determine what percent of lost workday cases with days away from work occurred to personnel engaged in the company s principle business operation, that is, making a product or providing a service, and what percent occurred to ancillary or support personnel. The sample was small and the variations by company were considerable. 

Contributors of data also provided OSHA incidence and lost workday case rates. Some of the companies with high OSHA rates had higher percentages of lost workday cases with days away from work occurring to workers engaged in the... 

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