Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP
Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare
OSHA is amending its occupational injury and illness recordkeeping regulation to require certain employers to electronically submit injury and illness information to OSHA that employers are already required to keep under the recordkeeping regulation.
Specifically, OSHA is amending its regulation to require establishments with 100 or more employees in certain designated industries to electronically submit information from their OSHA Forms 300 and 301 to OSHA once a year. OSHA will not collect employee names or addresses, names of health care professionals, or names and addresses of facilities where treatment was provided if treatment was provided away from the worksite from the Forms 300 and 301. Establishments with 20 to 249 employees in certain industries will continue to be required to electronically submit information from their OSHA Form 300A annual summary to OSHA once a year. All establishments with 250 or more employees that are required to keep records under OSHA’s injury and illness regulation will also continue to be required to electronically submit information from their Form 300A to OSHA on an annual basis.
OSHA is also updating the NAICS codes used in appendix A, which designates the industries required to submit their Form 300A data, and is adding appendix B, which designates the industries required to submit Form 300 and Form 301 data.
OSHA has determined that the data collection will assist the agency in its statutory mission to assure safe and healthful working conditions for working people (see 29 U.S.C. 651(b)). In addition, OSHA has determined that the expanded public access to establishment-specific, case-specific injury and illness data will allow employers, employees, potential employees, employee representatives, customers, potential customers, researchers, and the general public to make more informed decisions about workplace safety and health at a given establishment. OSHA believes that this accessibility will ultimately result in the reduction of occupational injuries and illnesses. OSHA estimates that this rule will have economic costs of $7.7 million per year, including $7.1 million per year to the private sector, with average costs of $136 per year for affected establishments with 100 or more employees, annualized over 10 years with a discount rate of seven percent. The agency believes that the annual benefits, while unquantified, significantly exceed the annual costs.
In this document (319 pages in length), scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on 07/21/2023 and available online at federalregister.gov/d/2023-15091, and on govinfo.gov addition, establishments will be required to include their company name when making electronic submissions to OSHA. OSHA intends to post some of the data from the annual electronic submissions on a public website after identifying and removing information that could reasonably be expected to identify individuals directly, such as individuals’ names and contact information.
This final rule becomes effective on January 1, 2024.
The unpublished PDF version can be viewed here.
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