Authors
Sacks-HK; Pana-Cryan-R
Source
NOIRS 2000--Abstracts of the National Occupational Injury Research Symposium 2000, Pittsburgh, PA, October 17-19, 2000. Pittsburgh, PA: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 2000 Oct; :72
Abstract
A cost model for traumatic injuries in mining has been developed as a tool to assist in focusing injury prevention research. Assigning a relative cost to an injury event provides a useful method for ranking research projects. It also provides compelling evidence for employers and employees to invest in preventative measures. The starting point for the model is the Mine Health and Safety Administration’s (MSHA) injury and illness database. The database provides information on the victim’s age, occupation, injury severity and time lost from work. The model, based on a societal perspective, calculates lost earnings and non-market loss (also known as home production) as a proxy for lost production. It also calculates medical costs. Earnings are derived from union contract data and commercial wage surveys. Future earnings estimates are adjusted for the employment cost index, discount rate, and life cycle salary growth. Medical costs are based on the days lost from work and the degree of injury. Aggregated data from the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) detailed claims information reports were analyzed. The analysis showed that medical costs are linearly related to days lost and benefit class. The model assigns a cost to each lost time injury in the MSHA database.
Keywords
Accidents; Accident-prevention; Injuries; Traumatic-injuries; Injury-prevention; Statistical-analysis; Computer-models; Computer-software; Mining-industry