OSHA Electronic Submission of Injury and Illness Reporting 2020
January 5, 2021 | By: Antonio Arzate
Overview
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) issued in 2013 a proposed rule to improve tracking of workplace injuries and illnesses through the electronic collection of establishment-specific injury and illness data to which OSHA currently does not have direct access.
Many employers will be required to electronically submit to OSHA the injury and illness data they’re already required to keep internally. The frequency of this submission will depend on the size of the business, but will be required at least annually. OSHA will begin making this injury and illness data publicly available on its website, but says it will remove any details “that could be used to identify individual employees.”
The final rule came into effect Jan. 1, 2017, OSHA wants to reminds employers that the agency will be collecting calendar year 2020 300A data starting January 2, 2021. Employers must submit electronically by March 2, 2021.
Establishments with 250 or more employees currently required to keep OSHA injury and illness records and establishments with 20-249 employee classified in specific industries (see link below) with historical high rates of occupational injuries and illnesses.
See link below of OSHA Standard 29 CFR 1904.41 Electronic submission of injury and illness records
High-risk industries include: Agriculture; Utilities; Construction; Manufacturing; Wholesale Trade; Warehousing and Storage; Postal Service; Freight Trucking; Bus Transportation; Scheduled Air Transportation; Waste Collection, Treatment and Disposal; General medical and Surgical Hospitals, Nursing Care Facilities, and many more just to name a few.
See link below for full list of industries that must submit injury and illness summary.
Non-mandatory and Partially Exempt Industries please link below for list.
If you are not in either of these two categories, then you must submit information from the injury and illness records to OSHA only if OSHA notifies you to do so for an individual data collection.
In addition to these submission requirements, today’s final rule also contains sections intended to protect employees from retaliation when they report an injury or illness. Specifically, the rule:
- “requires employers to inform employees of their right to report work-related injuries and illnesses free from retaliation”
- “clarifies the existing implicit requirement that an employer’s procedure for reporting work-related injuries and illnesses must be reasonable and not deter or discourage employees from reporting”
- “incorporates the existing statutory prohibition on retaliating against employees for reporting work-related injuries or illnesses”
OSHA has provided a secure website that offers three options for data submission. First, users are able to manually enter data into a webform. Second, users are able to upload a CSV file to process single or multiple establishments at the same time. Last, users of automated recordkeeping systems will have the ability to transmit data electronically via an API (application programming interface). The site went live in February 2017.
The OSHA website includes web forms for direct data entry and instructions for other means of submission (e.g. file uploads).
For establishments with 20-249 employees that are required to report, OSHA estimates that it will take a typical employer about 10 minutes to create an account and another 10 minutes to enter the required information from the Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses (Form 300A).
For establishments with 250 or more employees, OSHA estimates that it will take a typical employer about 10 minutes to create an account, 10 minutes to enter the required information from the Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses (Form 300A), and 12 minutes to enter the required information for each injury or illness recorded on their Log and Injury and Illness Incident Report forms (Forms 300 and 301).
Establishments must submit the information electronically and may not submit the information on paper. Employers who do not have the necessary equipment or internet connection may submit their data from a public facility, such as a library. OSHA also intends to provide an interface for entering data from a mobile device.
See link to Injury Tracking Application (ITA) overview below for more details.
How will OSHA Use This Recordkeeping Data?
Electronic submission of establishment-specific injury and illness data will enable OSHA to use its enforcement and compliance assistance resources more efficiently. Analysis of the data will improve OSHA’s ability to identify, target, and remove safety and health hazards, thereby preventing workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths.
The agency will make the injury and illness data public. After removing any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that could be used to identify individual employees, OSHA will post the data on osha.gov. Interested parties will be able to search and download the data. OSHA believes that posting timely, establishment-specific injury and illness data will provide valuable information to employers, employees, employee representatives, and researchers.
How will Personal Data be Protected?
OSHA will not collect employee name, employee address, name of physician or other health care professional, or healthcare facility name and address if treatment was given away from the worksite. All of the case specific narrative information in employer reports will be scrubbed for Personally Identifiable Information (PII) using software that will search for, and de-identify, personally identifiable information before the data are posted.
Please feel free to contact us directly if you have any questions or need assistants in creating online profile and establishments at safety@ib-tx.com or visit the US Department of Labor website for a list of Frequently-Asked Questions: https://www.osha.gov/recordkeeping/finalrule/finalrule_faq.html
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Posted by Nicole Lozano in Blog, Safety