Costs of occupational injury and illness in Pennsylvania
Article Abstract:
Occupational injuries and illnesses are significant causes of economic loss, sickness, and death. Despite continuous efforts at reducing workplace hazards, the number of workplace injuries has not diminished substantially. States with a large number of heavy industries, such as Pennsylvania, are especially affected. The personal loss of earnings and the associated medical costs are the two most important monetary losses associated with industrial and occupational injuries. Income losses include diminished productive output outside the work site, along with actual reductions in employee wages. Medical losses are all inclusive, including out-of-pocket costs, insurance and compensation payments, and the tangential costs that are transferred from the workplace to the community at large. Earning losses were estimated from industry averages, income appreciation potentials, interest losses, and adjusted for the age of the worker, extent of the injury, time lost, and in the case of fatalities, the overall losses and potential losses. Earnings losses in Pennsylvania for 1988 were estimated to be between $1.2 and $2.02 billion. Other adjustments, corrections for taxes, and non-work related dollars, should be factored in the final estimates. Medical costs were calculated from Workmen's Compensation records, actual medical costs accrued, the records of the Pennsylvania Health Care Containment Council, and physician records. Medical costs for occupational injury and illness in Pennsylvania for 1988 were estimated to be between $740 and $797 million dollars for the study interval. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)
Publication Name: Journal of Occupational Medicine
Subject: Health care industry
ISSN: 0096-1736
Year: 1991
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Evaluating the patient-handling tasks of nurses
Article Abstract:
Nurses and nurses' aides are at great risk for work-related back injuries. Studies have found that every year, 10 to 30 percent of nurses and personal care workers file a workman's compensation claim for back injury. The actual incidence of back injury is certainly higher, because not all injuries are reported or lead to a claim. The consequences of these injuries include medical costs, days out of work, and the use of temporary personnel to replace injured workers, which disrupts the continuity of care that patients receive. The most common way that nurses and aides injure their backs is by lifting and transferring patients, for example from a wheel chair to a bed. Because the technique used to lift patients may contribute to injury, a training program was designed to teach proper patient-handling techniques. The program, designed by Kaiser Permanente and called the Back Injury Prevention Project, included patient handling, exercise, and ways to change the environment to prevent injuries. In a pilot (preliminary) study, a method for assessing patient transfer techniques was evaluated. Using this transfer evaluation, the technique used by nurses was found to be 19 percent better in the intervention group than the control group; a total of 154 transfers were evaluated. It is concluded that this transfer evaluation effectively assesses the usefulness of an intervention program to prevent back injury among nurses and nurses' aides. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)
Publication Name: Journal of Occupational Medicine
Subject: Health care industry
ISSN: 0096-1736
Year: 1990
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