Agency seeks approval to understand failure to report injuries

A federal agency hopes to conduct a study to estimate underreporting of injuries and illnesses among individuals who seek care in emergency departments.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has formed an undergoing Paperwork Reduction Act review, seeking permission to question more than a thousand individuals about their work-related ailments that sent them to EDs. The two-year program would be funded through monies allocated by Congress to undertake the follow-up study.

If approved by the Office of Management and Budget, the study would:

Assess the reporting behavior of workers who are injured, ill, or exposed to a harmful substance at work.
Characterize the chronic aspects of work-related injuries or illnesses.
Estimate the prevalence of work-related chronic injuries and illnesses among United States workers treated in EDs.

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The study would direct particular attention to self-employed workers, employees with work-related illnesses, and workers with chronic health problems.

Between 1,500 and 3,000 interviews would be completed over the two-year period. Initial questions would weed out people younger than 20 or older than 64, those who don't speak English or Spanish, or people who were working as volunteers or day laborers when the incident occurred.

The 30-minute interviews would ask about the incident that drove the person to seek help at an ED, the characteristics of the job they were doing at the time, their experiences reporting their incident to the ED and employer, and the presence of underlying chronic conditions associated with the incident. Questions would also be asked about the nature of any other work-related chronic conditions the person has experienced.

Read more at the WorkersComp Forum homepage.

March 12, 2012

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