Workers compensation reporting

Data for the CFOl are compiled from various federal, state, and local administrative sources, including death certificates, workers compensation reports and claims, reports to various regulatory agencies, medical examiner reports, police reports, and news reports. Source documents are matched so that each fatality is counted only once. To ensure that a fatality occurred while at work, all information is verified from two or more independent source documents or from a source document and a follow-up questionnaire. Approximately 30 data elements are collected, coded, and tabulated, including information about the worker, the fatal incident, and the machinery or equipment involved. This database does not give any descriptions of the accidents (types or causes). 

Q. What is the effect of workers compensation reports on the OSHA records ... 

To determine which jobs you should analyze first, review your injury and illness reports such as the OSHA 200 log, your medical case histories, your first-aid cases, and workers compensation claims. First, you should conduct a JHA for jobs with the highest rates of disabling injuries and illnesses. Do not forget jobs in which you have had close calls or near hits. You should give these incidents a high priority. Analyses of new jobs and jobs in which changes have been made in processes and procedures should be the next priority. 

The economic impact of a disease can be measured by the direct costs of medical care and workers compensation or disability payments, and the indirect costs associated with lost workdays and loss of productivity. In 1984, the estimated annual direct and indirect costs of occupational skin diseases exceeded 22 million.69 However, considering that the actual annual incidence may be 10 to 50 times greater than reported in the BLS data, the total annual cost of occupational skin diseases in 1984 may have ranged from 222 million to 1 billion.69... 

What is the incidence and nature of relevant cases reported to workers compensation or insurance agencies ... 

Data on fatal work injuries are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), 1995. This program, which has collected occupational fatality data nationwide since 1992, uses diverse data sources to identify, verify, and profile fatal work injuries. Information about each workplace fatality (occupation and other worker characteristics, equipment being used, and circumstances of the event) is obtained by cross-referencing source documents, such as death certificates, workers compensation records, and reports to Federal and State agencies. This method assures counts are as complete and accurate as possible. 

As reviewed by Karwowski and Marras (1997), work-related musculoskeletal disorders currently account for one-third of aU occupational injuries and illnesses reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) by employers every year. These disorders thus constitute the largest job-related injury and illness problem in the United States today. According to OSHA (1999), in 1997 employers reported a total of 626,000 lost workday disorders to the BLS, and these disorders accounted for 1 of every 3 spent for workers compensation in that year. Employers pay more than 15-20 billion in workers compensation costs for these disorders every year, and other expenses associated with MSDs may increase this total to 45-54 billion a year. 

It would be useful to check these impressions against the official statistics on occupational risk collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), but these are notoriously unreliable. Indeed, the National Research Council, an offshoot of the National Academy of Sciences that reports on public policy issues, found the BLS data inadequate for monitoring the effectiveness of safety programs (Saddler, 1987). There are several problems. First, the data are collected as part of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) reporting system, which subjects them to distorting incentive effects. Firms are required to maintain logs of fatal and nonfatal accidents, but they have an incentive to underreport this information since it could be used as evidence to support workers compensation or tort claims by workers, and because... 

At the same time, these programs will help employers avoid the substantial cost impacts and business disruptions that accompany occupational injuries, illnesses and deaths. One widely-cited source regarding estimates of the magnitude of these costs is the Liberty Mutual Research Institute, which reports the direct cost of the most disabling workplace injuries in 2008 to be 53 billion (Liberty Mutual Research Institute 2010). Another source, the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI), estimates the annual workers compensation benefits paid for all compensable injuries and illnesses in 2009 at 58 billion (National Academy of Social Insurance 2011). NASI further reports the total costs paid by employers for workers compensation increased from 60 billion in 2000 to 74 billion in 2009. 

Improved business and cost savings including reduced workers compensation praniums, reduced administrative and human resources burden associated with filing injury and illness reports, managing workers compensation cases and training new employees. The companies also experienced improved efficiency in operations and material use, and improved productivity. They were able to leverage their limited health and safety resources. 

Baril and Berthelette (2000) analyze correlates of early return to work for a sample of Quebec workers compensation claims. Their qualitative analysis draws upon detailed interviews with 16 firms. Though no formal statistical analysis is drawn from these interviews, there appears to be a consensus among those interviewed that health and safety committees facilitate earlier returns to work, as does information sharing by management. However, the authors report that some types of worker involvement actually impeded returns to work returns... 

In an analysis of 117 California firms, Hakala (1994) reports that workers compensation experience modification fell as the degree of employee ownership increased. However, a firm s experience modification—an adjustment in its premiums according to whether the firm s losses are above or below the mean level in its risk class—depends on a firm s risk classification, making interclassification comparisons tenuous. Since the number of firm-level control variables is minimal in Hakala s research (as it is in Rooney s [1992] research), the findings need to be interpreted with caution. 

We generally find statistically significant effects, of the expected sign, in the duration models. While we do not report the estimated shape parameters of the Weibull distribution in Tables 3.4 or 3.5, they indicate negative duration dependence as claim duration increases, the rate of exit from claimant status falls. Hence, the longer a claimant stays on a workers compensation claim, the less likely he is to leave it. 

Second, the multinomial estimates provide no corroborative evidence of moral hazard behavior with regard to other (non-HR) results Downsizing has no impact on claim types, increases in the replacement rate do not increase the proportion of lower back sprains, and self-insurance does not lower the proportion of lower back sprains. As the replacement rate increases, the opportunity cost of being out of work on a workers compensation claim falls. Claims-reporting moral hazard will likely increase, especially for injuries (such as lower back sprains) whose work origin is difficult to monitor or detect. Hence, an increase in claims-reporting moral hazard ought to increase the proportion of low back sprains. 

This doesn t mean that moral hazard isn t important, only that the claims denial and multinomial logit results indicate that HRM practices do not reduce workers compensation solely, or even mainly, through reductions in claims-reporting moral hazard response. 

Habeck, Rochelle V, Michael J. Leahy, and H. Allan Hunt. 1988. Disability Prevention and Management and Workers Compensation Claims. Final Report to Bureau of Workers Disabihty Compensation, Michigan Department of Labor. Kalamazoo, MI WE. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. 

Williams, Cecili Thompson, Virginia P. Reno, and John F. Burton Jr. 2003. Workers Compensation Benefits, Coverage, and Costs, 2001. Sixth in a series on workers compensation national data. Washington, DC National Academy of Social Insurance. http //www.nasi.org/usr doc/Woikers Cbmp Report 2001 Final.pdf (accessed January 27,2005). 

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