Using Work Comp Claims to Complete the OSHA 300 Log Can Cause Problems

By Brian Zaidman, Research and Statistics, Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry

Editor’s Note: MCIT routinely receives requests from members for workers’ compensation claims data to help them develop required OSHA 300 logs. Although some data collected for workers’ compensation purposes is also used for the completion of a 300 log, the following Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry article explains the reasons information records are different and separate documents.

True or false? Your OSHA 300 log cases and your workers’ compensation claims should be the same.

The correct answer is “false.” Cases that may be compensable under Minnesota’s workers’ compensation laws may not meet the requirements for becoming an OSHA recordable case and some OSHA 300 log cases will not be compensable under Minnesota’s workers’ compensation laws. The recordability of work-related injuries and illnesses is determined by the federal government’s OSHA recordkeeping requirements (29 CFR 1904), which are not related to Minnesota’s workers’ compensation laws.

At first glance, recording injuries and illnesses on an OSHA 300 log and filing workers’ compensation claims appear to be two sides of the same coin. However, these two actions are part of two  different systems—with different backgrounds and personalities—and use the information for different purposes.

Although many employers use the injury and illness cases interchangeably, the OSHA 300 log is not meant to be a mirror image of a workers’ compensation claims report. A close reading of the OSHA recordkeeping requirements and workers’ compensation laws shows there will be OSHA recordable cases that are not workers’ compensation claims, and there will be workers’ compensation claims that are not OSHA recordable cases.

Including an injury or illness on the OSHA 300 log is not an admission of work-relatedness for workers’ compensation benefits.

The OSHA recordkeeping system was developed as a nationally standardized system for employers to keep track of the work-related injuries and illnesses for each business establishment. This tracking system provides a tool for employers to monitor the performance of their workplace safety programs and to compare their performance to state and national standards.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics gathers an annual sample of OSHA 300 log data to compute national injury and illness estimates, providing statistics for occupational safety and health researchers, and incidence rate benchmarks for employers.

Workers’ compensation systems were developed as administrative systems to provide predictable, equitable and timely benefits to injured workers. These systems require an insurance component to provide the funds to pay for the benefits and match business risks to insurance costs. Each state developed its own independent workers’ compensation system, and these systems were in place decades before the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which mandated use of the OSHA log for most workplaces, became law.

Cases that Should Not Appear in Both Systems

Although the majority of workplace injuries and illnesses that are reported to one system should also be reported to the other system, there are some types of injuries and illnesses that do not belong in both systems.

Here is a short list of some of the reasons that injuries and illnesses that are reported to one system shouldn’t be reported to the other system.

• Injuries and illnesses that do not result in any days away from work, do not result in any job restriction or transfer and are treated with only first aid are not recordable on the OSHA 300 log, with a few exceptions. Diagnostic testing, regardless of cost or where it is done, is not considered medical treatment for OSHA purposes. Even though some injury cases might have involved hundreds of dollars of medical diagnostic testing, which may be compensable as workers’ compensation medical treatments, they do not belong as recordable cases on the OSHA 300 log.
• The Minnesota workers’ compensation system defines work-relatedness based on the increased risk standard for injuries and illnesses arising out of and in the course of employment. OSHA uses the positional risk standard to determine work-relatedness, which presumes injuries and illnesses that occur in the workplace are work-related, even where work may be only one of many contributing factors. The OSHA recordkeeping requirements provide a set of exceptions. Even in cases where workers’ compensation benefits have been denied by the insurer and where primary liability has never been accepted, the injury or illness may meet the requirements for OSHA 300 log recordability.
• In Minnesota, post-traumatic stress disorder is the only mental impairment that is compensable without any physical harm to the worker. However, if a worker voluntarily provides information from a physician or other licensed health care professional stating the employee has a work-related mental illness, then the illness is recordable on the OSHA 300 log if the worker has one or more days away from work, has job restriction or transfer, requires medical care beyond first aid or suffers a loss of consciousness.
• When a worker returns to work following an injury and re-injures the same body part that may not have been fully healed, it is not recordable as a new OSHA recordable case, but it may generate a new workers’ compensation claim.
• All instances where a worker loses consciousness, regardless of the duration of the episode, must be recorded on the OSHA log.

Another situation for reporting errors occurs with temporary workers and leased employees. If the establishment where they are working controls the employees on a day-to-day basis, even if they are not on the employer’s payroll, their injuries and illnesses must be entered on the establishment’s log.

For workers’ compensation purposes, the temporary help agency or employee leasing company often has responsibility for reporting the injury or illness to the workers’ compensation insurer. Thus, the same injury or illness case may show up on the OSHA 300 log for one company and become part of the workers’ compensation record for a different company.

This article was originally published in the August 2014 edition of Compact, a publication of the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry (DLI.mn.gov). Reprinted with permission.