Although occupational injuries are among the leading causes of death and disability around the world, the burden due to occupational injuries has historically been under-recognized, obscuring the need to address a major public health problem. We established the Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index (LMWSI) to provide a reliable annual metric of the leading causes of the most serious workplace injuries in the United States based on direct workers compensation (WC) costs. More than $600 billion in direct WC costs were spent on the most disabling compensable non-fatal injuries and illnesses in the United States from 1998 to 2010. The burden in 2010 remained similar to the burden in 1998 in real terms. The categories of overexertion ($13.6B, 2010) and fall on same level ($8.6B, 2010) were consistently ranked 1st and 2nd. The LMWSI was created to establish the relative burdens of events leading to work-related injury so they could be better recognized and prioritized. Such a ranking might be used to develop research goals and interventions to reduce the burden of workplace injury in the United States.
The direct cost burden of 13years of disabling workplace injuries in the U.S. (1998-2010): Findings from the Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index
2015
Article (Journal)
English
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