OSHA announces final rule that could mean additional reporting for providers in January

The Department of Labor on Monday announced the final version of a rule that could mean additional reporting requirements for some senior living and nursing home providers starting in January.

The rule by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is meant to improve tracking of workplace injuries and illnesses. Specifically, OSHA is amending its regulation to require establishments with 100 or more employees in certain industries to electronically submit information from their Forms 300 and 301 to the agency once a year. Among those affected are skilled nursing facilities, assisted living communities, continuing care retirement / life plan communities and other residential care facilities.

The rule maintains existing requirements for employers with 20 to 99 employees, which must submit annual summaries of injury and illness information.

OSHA says that the new reporting requirement will allow it to keep closer tabs on illness and injuries in the workplace as well as make the information publicly available.

The forthcoming final rule “is a huge expansion of what employers must send to OSHA and will allow OSHA to obtain — and then publish to third parties — the specific injury and illness records that each senior living and skilled nursing operator keeps at their worksites,” Micah Dickie, an Atlanta-based attorney with Fisher & Phillips’s Workplace Safety and Catastrophe Management Practice Group, previously told McKnight’s Senior Living. 

OSHA will publish some of the data collected on its website to allow employers, employees, potential employees, employee representatives, current and potential customers, researchers and the general public to use information about a company’s workplace safety and health record to make informed decisions. 

OSHA will not collect employee names or addresses, names of healthcare

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.

“OSHA believes that providing public access to the data will ultimately reduce occupational injuries and illnesses,” the Labor Department said. 

OSHA also is updating the North American Industry Classification System, or NAICS, codes in appendix A of the rule, which designate 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.