Check out 'The Soloff & Zervanos Show' Podcast on WWDB Talk 860 - Click Here!

Healthcare Workers Most Likely To Be Injured On The Job

Posted in Workers Compensation on Thursday, August 8, 2013.

A report says that healthcare workers, not firefighters or police officers, are the most likely in any industry to get hurt or sick on the job. Unsafe working conditions in hospitals, clinics and other healthcare workplaces resulting in injury or illness were more numerous than those in the manufacturing or construction industries, according to the report.

Manufacturing was second on the list in the report, which looked at OSHA inspections, OSHA violations, workplace injury accidents and other factors. Healthcare injuries and illnesses were tallied at 654,000 in 2010, some 152,000 more than those in manufacturing. Regarding OSHA inspections, healthcare workers outnumber those in the construction industry by a ratio of 2-1, but construction work sites were inspected 20 times more often than healthcare environments.

Labor Department officials said they would take a look at the numbers in the report to see if changes needed to be made. They defended the disparity in OSHA inspections between healthcare work sites and construction sites by noting that the latter see far more fatalities. Another problem mentioned by labor officials is that OSHA’s 2013 budget has to spread its $535 million over more than 7 million work sites, which may be inadequate.

An attorney experienced in litigating workers’ compensation cases may be helpful in assisting injured or ill workers get the compensation for medical expenses and other benefits they are entitled to. Such a lawyer may be helpful to consult in cases of lost wages, back injury, neck injury, crush injury, repetitive stress injury, occupational disease, permanent disability, construction site accidents, healthcare workplace accidents, manufacturing industry accidents and other situations in which an OSHA violation or other unsafe practice may have occurred.

Source: USA Today, “In health care industry, who will keep workers safe?“, Fatimah Waseem, August 03, 2013