OSHA Based Incidence Rates

The OSHA incidence rates are based upon 200,000 hours of exposure—equivalent to a company with 100 employees, each working 2,000 hours in a calendar year. This corresponds to what an average full-time employee would work in a 40-hour week during a 52-week year (minus two weeks for vacation and holidays). Using this exposure value of 200,000 hours allows for comparisons between equal 100 full-time employee establishments. These comparisons can be made between different establishments and comparisons within the same establishment between different subgroups. Comparisons can also be made between the establishment s OSHA incidence rate and national estimates of incidence rates based upon Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Codes and the new North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). 

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OSHA-Based Incidence Rates one of the more common methods of measuring safety performance, including OSHA recordable injury incidence rates, recordable illness incidence rates, death rates, and lost day case injury rates. 

Nevertheless, it should be understood that, in their safety achievements, a few companies have done better than Six Sigma. Assume that an OSHA recordable incident is the defect to be measured. How does 3.4 defective parts per million relate to an OSHA recordable incident rate OSHA rates are computed from a base of 200,000 hours worked. To be at an OSHA incident recordable rate of 3.4 incidents per million hours, the computed rate using a 200,000 hour base would 0.68. That rate has been bettered by a few of the best performing companies, but only a few. Thus, on occasion, humans are capable of doing better than Six Sigma. 

With these activity-based performance measures, there is also a variety of safety metrics that can be used to assess program performance. As identified by OSHA in studies ofVPP organizations, OSHA injury incidence rates, lost work day rates, and workers compensation losses are a few safety metrics that have been correlated to the performance of the VPP criteria activities. These measures can easily be expanded to include unsafe behaviors, accident trends, and near misses. 

Achieving a Six Sigma quality level is a major accomplishment. How does it relate to occupational injury and illness performance OSHA s recordable incident rate is based on 200,000 hours worked. Project the 200,000 base to a million by multiplying by 5. If an organization had an OSHA recordable incident rate of 0.68, it would be operating at the Six Sigma level. For most organizations, that would be notable. 

An important aspect of environmental, health, and safety laws and regulations is enforcement. Eederal, state, and local regulatory authorities usually have large enforcement sections. In the environmental area, compliance audits are usually conducted aimually. OSHA, both federal and state, usually audits based on a faciHty s accident/incident rate. 

The OSHA incidence rate is based on cases per 100 worker years. A worker year is assumed to contain 2000 hours (50 work weeks/year X 40 hours/week). The OSHA incidence rate is therefore based on 200,000 hours of worker exposure to a hazard. The OSHA incidence rate is calculated from the number of occupational injuries and illnesses and the total number of employee hours worked during the applicable period. The following equation is used ... 

OSHA incidence rate (based on injuries and illness)... 

The OSHA incidence rate provides information on all types of work-related injuries and illnesses, including fatalities. This provides a better representation of worker accidents than systems based on fatalities alone. For instance, a plant might experience many small accidents with resulting injuries but no fatalities. On the other hand, fatality data cannot be extracted from the OSHA incidence rate without additional information. 

A university has 1200 full-time employees. In a particular year this university had 38 reportable lost-time injuries with a resulting 274 lost workdays. Compute the OSHA incidence rate based on injuries and lost workdays. 

Another way of measuring accident performance is by the LTIR, or lost-time injury rate. This is identical to the OSHA incidence rate based on incidents in which the employee is unable to continue their normal duties. A plant site has 1200 full-time employees working 40 hr/week and 50 weeks/yr. If the plant had 2 lost-time incidents last year, what is the LTIR ... 

The OSHA incidences rates are based upon 200,000 hours of exposure which is equivalent to a company with 100 employees each working2,000 hours in a calendar year. This corresponds to what an average full-time employee would work in a 40-hour week during a 52-week year (minus two weeks for vacation and holidays). 

Frequency of reviews should be determined based on several factors— for example, the results from previous reviews, previous self-assessments, safety performance as measured by OSHA Incidence Rate (OIR), Lost Workday Incidence Rate (IWDIR), Workers Compensation Claims... 

In a sense, the actuarial premises on which the workers compensation experience rating system was developed give credibility to OSHA-recordable incident 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/serious outcome risks may not be encompassed within the experience base. 

Over time and when the exposure base is sufficiently large, comparisons of workers compensation costs and OSHA statistics, with other companies in the same industry or those considered to have comparable risks, should have a positive and linear relationship. In a benchmarking process, an individual shared data with a company that had an OSHA incident recordable rate of 0.9, which was about one-seventh of his own company s record. He expressed doubt about the validity of the 0.9 OSHA rate, but became a believer when workers compensation cost trendings... 

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