Home Health & Hospice Week

Check out new enforcement guidance the Occupational Safety and Health Adminis­tration released May 19.

Then: Interim guidance released April 10 eliminated most employers’ obligation to analyze whether a COVID-19 case is work-related if certain conditions are met. However, healthcare, emergency response organizations, and correctional institutions still had to make the relatedness determinations, point out attorneys Jaslyn W. Johnson and John F. Martin with law firm Ogletree Deakins.

Now: The new guidance, which took effect May 26, “reinstates the duty to determine the work-relatedness of these cases,” Johnson and Martin note in online analysis.

“In many instances it remains difficult to determine whether a COVID-19 illness is work-related, especially when an employee has experienced potential exposure both in and out of the workplace,” OSHA acknowledges in the guidance.“Because of the difficulty with determining work-relatedness, OSHA is exercising enforcement discretion to assess employers’ efforts in making work-related determinations.”

When assessing, OSHA will consider factors such as whether the worker has “lengthy, close exposure to a particular customer or coworker who has a confirmed case of COVID-19 and there is no alternative explanation,” the guidance says. See more factors and the rest of the guidance at www.osha.gov/memos/2020-05-19/revised-enforcement-guidance-recording-cases-coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19.