When is an incident osha recordable

The answer is missing out on injury recording or reporting obligations. The good news is that OSHA makes injury recording and reporting clear with precise guidelines and examples within the standard.

Safesite created this OSHA recordable incident guide to help you sort through recordable and reportable injuries. Keep reading to learn how to identify a recordable injury and for tricky examples of non-recordable, recordable, and reportable injuries. Do you have more reporting compliance questions?

Check out our post on OSHA recordkeeping requirements for a quick overview. OSHA wants to know about incidents that reach a specified level of severity. Rather, the basic requirement laid out in standard The best way to reduce OSHA-related events is to establish a comprehensive worker safety program in your business to both prevent injuries before they happen and to provide the proper care should they occur.

There are also several other ways to legally and ethically reduce OSHA recordables particularly because so many of these events are as simple as a sprained ankle that ends up in the ER because there is no other way to provide support to the injured worker. Too many companies today overtreat simple on-the-job injuries with one standard response: Going to the ER. Not only is this overkill for the majority of workplace injuries that are orthopedic and non-urgent, but it takes an exorbitant level of cash in the form of co-pays and elevated healthcare costs.

Remote Injury Care provides injured employees with access to licensed medical experts almost immediately to triage and treat most jobsite injuries. Available wherever work happens, Remote Injury Care visits can be conducted via telephone calls or face-to-face video conferencing on smartphones, tablets or computers. Instead of making the emergency room your go-to response to any workplace injury, no matter how minor, technology allows you to connect quickly with a professional care provider that can diagnose the severity of the injury to determine the course of care.

Click here to schedule a demo and improve your workplace safety response with OrthoLive Remote Injury Care. Find out how you can be featured by clicking here.

According to OSHA , the following are recordable events: Any work-related injury resulting in a loss of consciousness An injury that causes the worker to miss work days Injuries that force restricted work or a job transfer Any illness or injury that requires treatment beyond first aid Obviously, not all on-the-job incidents are recordable. Recordable Recordable OSHA events are workplace injuries that require medical treatment that extends beyond first aid.

Injuries that do not require medical treatment beyond first aid are generally not recordable. The OSH Act defines first aid to include the following:. You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Please enable scripts and reload this page. May 14, Reuse Permissions. Page Content. A work-related injury or illness must be recorded under the Occupational Safety and Health OSH Act if it results in one or more of the following: Death. Days away from work. Restricted work or transfer to another job.

Medical treatment beyond first aid. Loss of consciousness. A significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician or other licensed health care professional. The OSH Act defines first aid to include the following: Using a nonprescription medication at nonprescription strength. For medications available in both prescription and nonprescription form, a recommendation by a physician or other licensed health care professional to use a nonprescription medication at prescription strength is considered medical treatment for record-keeping purposes.

If the employee is still away from work because of the injury or illness when you prepare the annual summary, estimate the total number of calendar days you expect the employee to be away from work, use this number to calculate the total for the annual summary, and then update the initial log entry later when the day count is known or reaches the day cap.

When an injury or illness involves restricted work or job transfer but does not involve death or days away from work, you must record the injury or illness on the OSHA Log by placing a check mark in the space for job transfer or restriction and an entry of the number of restricted or transferred days in the restricted workdays column.

Restricted work occurs when, as the result of a work-related injury or illness:. No, you do not have to record restricted work or job transfers if you, or the physician or other licensed health care professional, impose the restriction or transfer only for the day on which the injury occurred or the illness began. A partial day of work is recorded as a day of job transfer or restriction for recordkeeping purposes, except for the day on which the injury occurred or the illness began.

No, the case is considered restricted work only if the worker does not perform all of the routine functions of his or her job or does not work the full shift that he or she would otherwise have worked. If a physician or other licensed health care professional recommends a job restriction, you should ensure that the employee complies with that restriction. If you assign an injured or ill employee to a job other than his or her regular job for part of the day, the case involves transfer to another job.

Note: This does not include the day on which the injury or illness occurred. For example, if you assign, or a physician or other licensed health care professional recommends that you assign, an injured or ill worker to his or her routine job duties for part of the day and to another job for the rest of the day, the injury or illness involves a job transfer. You must record an injury or illness that involves a job transfer by placing a check in the box for job transfer. The only difference is that, if you permanently assign the injured or ill employee to a job that has been modified or permanently changed in a manner that eliminates the routine functions the employee was restricted from performing, you may stop the day count when the modification or change is made permanent.

You must count at least one day of restricted work or job transfer for such cases. If a work-related injury or illness results in medical treatment beyond first aid, you must record it on the OSHA Log. If the injury or illness did not involve death, one or more days away from work, one or more days of restricted work, or one or more days of job transfer, you enter a check mark in the box for cases where the employee received medical treatment but remained at work and was not transferred or restricted.

If a physician or other licensed health care professional recommends medical treatment, you should encourage the injured or ill employee to follow that recommendation. However, you must record the case even if the injured or ill employee does not follow the physician or other licensed health care professional's recommendation.