Data from Fisher Phillips’ recently launched OSHA inspections tracker gave the law firm’s attorneys pause, as the results showed that healthcare inspections from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration rank fifth among various industries so far in 2022. The lawyers had expected healthcare to rank at least third.
“I was surprised that healthcare didn’t account for a larger percentage of inspections, but that could be because OSHA was so focused on its ‘vax or test’ rule. But I predict that there will be an increase in healthcare inspections and that they will account for a much larger percentage of the overall activity as the year progresses,” Kevin Troutman, co-chair of Fisher Phillips’ national Healthcare Industry Group, told the McKnight’s Business Daily.
“President Biden’s call during the State of the Union for increased scrutiny on the nursing home industry, and Monday’s press release from OSHA, indicate that healthcare facilities should be prepared to face increased scrutiny from inspectors.”
OSHA on Monday announced a short-term increase in highly focused inspections directed at skilled nursing facilities and hospitals that treat or handle people with COVID-19. The agency said that it will be initiating focused inspections to emphasize monitoring for current and future readiness to protect workers from the coronavirus. Follow-up inspections will be conducted at sites that previously were issued citations, as well as where complaints were received but the agency did not conduct in-person inspections.
“We are using available tools while we finalize a healthcare standard,” Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Doug Parker said in the announcement. “We want to be ahead of any future events in healthcare.”
The Fisher Phillips Knowledge Management team, the folks that built the tracker, said that they defined “healthcare” using the NAICS Industry Sector grouping 62, which includes skilled nursing facilities and assisted living communities as well as ambulatory healthcare services, hospitals and social assistance.
They found that the top five most likely business categories to be inspected by federal workplace safety officials, based on a sample of 9,616 inspections since Jan. 2, 2022, are:
- Construction (40%)
- Manufacturing (21%)
- Retail (6%)
- Waste management and remediation (5%)
- Healthcare (4.6%)
According to Todd Logsdon and Travis Vance, co-chairs of Fisher Phillips’ Workplace Safety and Catastrophe Practice Group, there are a couple of reasons healthcare may have ranked lower than expected.
“First, the tracker has captured inspections in calendar year 2022. The healthcare ETS was withdrawn by OSHA in late December 2021. So, the ETS would not have been a factor in selecting healthcare locations for inspections during 2022,” they told the McKnight’s Business Daily. “Second, as the COVID-19 cases have begun to decrease, we have anecdotally seen an increase in non-COVID-related inspections, which have typically been outside of healthcare. Third, when OSHA conducts an inspection under the Rapid Response Investigation (RRI) program where it contacts the employer via phone and emails a letter regarding a complaint and requesting a written response, those RRIs may not be reported by OSHA as an actual inspection with an accompanying inspection number.”
As OSHA begins focusing on those healthcare employers that previously have been inspected or that received an inquiry under rapid response inspection but did not have an in-person inspection, Logsdon and Vance speculated that the evidence may point to an increase in percentage of inspections at healthcare settings. Fisher Phillips will run the numbers again in June.
