Protect your employees and your commercial assets by reducing your workers compensation insurance risks.
While nursing homes and long-term care facilities seem like relatively safe places to work, this isn’t completely accurate. Employees of healthcare facilities face some of the highest rates of on-the-job injuries across all industries. If you are involved in the nursing home or long-term care industry, then your business is subject to higher workers compensation insurance costs. Fortunately, there are some steps that you can take to reduce your risk and, as a result, your insurance expenses. Here are some of the things that you should do to reduce your business’s risk for workers compensation claims.
Understanding Your Risk
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employees working at nursing homes and long-term care facilities experience rates of injury that are seven times higher than the average across all industries. This rate eclipses even those seen in the construction, mining, and manufacturing industries.
When it comes to nursing homes and long-term care facilities, the majority of employee injuries occur during the lifting, transporting, and repositioning of patients. While larger facilities have special equipment and strict safety protocols to handle these tasks, smaller facilities may not have these resources. As a result, employees have to bear the load of moving patients, significantly increasing their chances of musculoskeletal injuries. This, in turn, leads to missed work days, reduced productivity, and expensive workers compensation insurance claims.
Preventing Workplace Injuries
There are several steps that you can take to reduce your risk for on-the-job injuries. Here are some of the precautionary measures that you should employ at your facility:
- Offer ongoing health and safety training for all your employees.
- Invest in special equipment to assist your employees with lifting and transporting patients.
- Ensure that your employees are fit for duty; are they fit enough to complete routine tasks safely while acting in the patient’s best interests in mind?
- Make sure that you and other managerial staff are keeping an eye on your employees to ensure that they are acting safely and following your facility’s procedures.
- Adhere to OSHA regulations and safety guidelines.
- Encourage employees to speak up about any potential safety risks that they notice while on the job. When concerns are brought to your attention, make sure that you address them as soon as possible.
- Conduct frequent inspections of your workplace to check for any safety hazards such as leaky pipes, uneven flooring, malfunctioning equipment, broken lighting fixtures, and so on.
These are some of the steps that you can take to reduce your workers compensation insurance risks at your nursing home or long-term care facility. Do you have additional questions when it comes to reducing the cost of your workers compensation insurance? If so, then contact the experts at PMC Insurance Group. We are ready to get you the coverage that you need today.
