NIOSH is asking the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) to approve its information collection request (ICR) which would allow it to collect occupational safety and health data from healthcare facilities “to track the incidence of injuries, identify risk factors, target prevention activities and evaluate interventions to reduce the occurrence of occupational injury among healthcare personnel.”
The data would be provided to NIOSH's Occupational Health Safety Network (OHSN), which has been operating continuously and receiving voluntary monthly reports from 116 participating facilities since 2012. OHSN currently tracks three common, serious, and preventable categories of traumatic injury to healthcare personnel: Slips, trips and falls; musculoskeletal disorders resulting from patient handling and movement events; and workplace violence.
NIOSH says OHSN will add new modules about exposure to sharps injury and blood and body fluids exposures.
“Unlike other national occupational surveillance systems, OHSN offers integrated approach to monitor standard occupational injuries among facility-based healthcare personnel in the U.S. and to provide timely, facility-level feedback to participants with benchmarking and analyses capabilities,” NIOSH says.
But a total of 900 additional facilities are expected to enroll over the next three years so NIOSH is seeking approval for an ICR that would formalize the data collection effort.