OSHA’s new reporting requirements began on January 1, 2015. Under these requirements, employers in federal OSHA jurisdiction are required to report to OSHA any work-related fatality or any work-related injury resulting in an employee being formally admitted to the hospital or any work-related amputation or loss of an eye. Since the implementation of these new requirements, OSHA estimates that it is receiving 200 to 250 reported incidents each week.

According to OSHA, roughly 40 percent of those reported injury cases are resulting in an on-site inspection by the agency. In about 50 percent of the cases OSHA is instituting the “rapid response investigation” and sending the employer a letter requesting additional information about the incident and the employer’s corrective actions. In roughly 10 percent of the cases, no agency action is taken either because the event was not reportable under the new requirements or OSHA does not have jurisdiction.

To date not all state plans have adopted the new reporting requirements and some have, but have not adopted them verbatim. For example, Kentucky previously required employers to report amputations within 72 hours. However, Kentucky OSHA’s definition of amputation is limited to amputations including bone-loss. In revising its reporting requirements, Kentucky simply added the reporting of the loss of an eye. So Kentucky chose to keep the 72 hour requirement and not adopt federal OSHA’s 24-hour time period for amputations. Additionally, Kentucky OSHA did not revise its definition of amputation to include amputation of finger-tips without bone loss.

OSHA has compiled a table listing the status of each state’s adoption of the new requirements.