Home Health & Hospice Week

Large providers narrowly miss out on regulatory relief.

Now that 2024 has arrived, make sure you’re complying with newly revamped injury and illness reporting requirements from the feds.

Background: Most industries with more than 10 employees (including home health and hospice) are required to keep in-house records of occupational injuries and illnesses. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration designates three forms, or their equivalent, to record these instances:

1. OSHA Form 300-Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses — information about the employee, the injury or illness and its outcome.

2. OSHA Form 301-Injury and Illness Incident Report — employee information, the name and address of the treating healthcare professional and more comprehensive details about where and how the incident occurred.

3. OSHA Form 300A-Annual Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses — general employer workplace information and summary data for all recorded injuries and illnesses.

Up to now, only two groups have been required to electronically submit their summary data (Form 300A) to OSHA every year — organizations with 20 to 249 employees in certain designated industries; or 250 or more employees in most any industry.

But a rule OSHA published last summer changed that.

What’s New, What Remains?

New: Effective Jan. 1, companies identified in the final rule, Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses, published last July 23 must electronically send detail from all three forms. Case-specific elements required annually include the injury or illness date; physical location/severity; worker details; and specifics about how the reportable instance occurred.

Unchanged: The two groups required to electronically submit their Form 300A summary data to OSHA each year will continue to do so.

Appendix B in the new rule excludes NAIC code 6216 — Home Health Care Services on the list of industries required to annually report. However, if you are part of an organization with 100+ employees identified by NAIC codes 6219, 6221, 6222, 6223, 6231, 6232, 6233, 6239, which are included in the appendix, you’ll need to electronically report.

Remember: In some states, the rule may not apply as a state agency enforces occupational safety and health and not OSHA.

Unfortunately, larger home health and hospice organizations narrowly missed out on getting some regulatory relief in this area. “OSHA proposed to remove the requirement for establishments with 250 or more employees, not in a designated industry, to electronically submit information from their Form 300A to OSHA on an annual basis,” notes the National Association for Home Care & Hospice in its member newsletter.

However: “Based on public comments expressing concern over the proposal, OSHA is retaining the requirement for establishments with 250 or more employees to also submit the Form 300A — Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses, electronically to OSHA once a year,” NAHC confirms. “Because OSHA finalized that all establishments with 250 or more employees must electronically submit Form 300A, large home health and hospice organizations will be required to comply with this requirement,” the trade group emphasizes.

An easy and definitive way to verify if your organization is required to submit data is to use OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application (ITA) — Coverage Application found at www.osha.gov/itareportapp.

Recommendation: Save the result for future reference.

Also, under the new rule, all establishments must include their “legal” company name on electronic submissions.

Covered providers must use the OSHA ITA website. You can use the manual web form, a comma-separated values (CSV) upload, or an application programming interface (API) feed.

The reporting deadline is March 2 of the year following the covered year of the data (e.g., for calendar year 2023, it is March 2, 2024).

Resource: Access the ITA from the launch page at www.osha.gov/injuryreporting. For detailed instructions on the submission process, click on the Job Aides (How To) selection.

Note: For more on the rule, see the fact sheet at www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OSHA_FS-4272_ITA_07-2023.pdf and FAQs at www.osha.gov/injuryreporting/ faqs#v-nav-reportingreq.