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The Workplace Safety Consultation (WSC) unit of the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry undertook a collaborative project to provide ergonomics assistance to nursing homes to help management and workers reduce ergonomic risk factors and improve the safety of their workplaces.
The study can be found here.
It was noted in the report that work-related injuries and illnesses are very common among nursing home workers. In 2008,private industry nursing homes had an estimated 2,300 recordable injury and illness cases, 3 percent of the state’s total number of recordable cases. Private-sector nursing homes had a total OSHA-recordable case (TRC) rate of 7.6 cases per 100 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers in 2008, compared with an overall private sector rate of 4.2 cases per 100 FTE workers.
The intervention homes made more investments in their safety programs during the ergonomics services program, and generally had greater safety and health improvements. The intervention nursing homes reported a significant increase inthe number of electric lifts, while the controlhomes added very few new resident-handling devices. On each of the 36 measures made from the OSHA logs comparing the pre- and postservice case rates, the intervention homes showed larger absolute and percent decreases in their injury and illness rates.
As I have posted before, health care workers have a higher likelihood of sustaining certain injuries than that of construction, mining, and manufacturing workers. This can be associated to lifting, transferring and pushing patients.
If you have been injured on the job and denied benefits, contact an experienced workers’ compensation attorney to assist you. We at the Law Office of Thomas Mottaz would be more than happy to sit down with you and discuss your legal options. For free consultation, please visit our website here.
One of the many ways the employer and insurer may try to deny you claim is on the basis that you are “faking” your symptoms. In order to determine if you are faking, they will typically have you undergo an Adverse Medical Examination to assess your symptoms. Mike Bryant posted about “Waddel signs” which is a series of tests that the adverse examiner may use to determine if you are faking.
As Mr. Bryant noted in his blog, if an adverse examiner believes you have certain “Waddel signs” there are ways in which an experienced attorney can attack those findings.
If you find yourself in a situation where you are without council and the adverse examiner is against you, it may be in your best interests to retain an experienced and knowledgeable attorney to help you.
The May 2010 edition of “COMPACT,” the newsletter from the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry’s Safety and Workers’ Compensation Division is online now at
