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Regulatory

OSHA will provide a secure website for the electronic Director of Risk & Regulatory Affairs Dave Byrd. “If it’s
submission of information. The website will include web a skier-skier collision involving an employee where that
forms for direct data entry and instructions for other means employee is hospitalized overnight, that’s likely reportable to
of submission. OSHA. You may want to run this by your outside counsel
For establishments with 20 to 249 employees that are first, to avoid making statements to OSHA that could come
required to report, OSHA estimates that it will take a typical back to harm the ski area outside of an OSHA context, like a
employer about 10 minutes to create an account and another personal injury lawsuit.”
10 minutes to enter the required information from the This is especially true, Byrd emphasized, if OSHA
Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses (Form 300A). selects to conduct a Rapid Response Investigation, which
For establishments with 250 or more employees, is at the discretion of regional OSHA administrators. The
OSHA estimates that it will take a typical employer about agency will ask how such an injury could have been pre-
10 minutes to create an account, 10 minutes to enter the vented. “Your OSHA submission, especially in a rapid
required information from the Summary of Work-Related response investigation, could contain ammunition for a
Injuries and Illnesses (Form 300A), and 12 minutes to enter plaintiffs’ attorney, especially in collision incidents where an
the required information for each injury or illness recorded employee is involved with a guest collision.”
on their Log and Injury and Illness Incident Report forms
(Forms 300 and 301). Conclusion
Establishments must submit the information electroni-
cally and may not submit the information on paper. OSHA The ski industry is a challenging industry to be successful in,
also intends to provide an interface for entering data from a especially if a resort is only operating seasonally and has no
mobile device. The new electronic submission of establish- spring, summer, and fall operations to generate year-round
ment-specific injury and illness data will enable OSHA to income. But even all-season resorts struggle with the whims
use its enforcement and compliance assistance resources more of weather, changing demographics, and other pressures,
efficiently. Analysis of the data will improve OSHA’s ability all of which can affect annual skier visits. And when that
to identify, target, and remove safety and health hazards, happens, employee training and safety and health programs
thereby preventing workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths. may seem like just another expense. Even so, there is no
There are no changes to reporting a fatality or more important investment.
severe injury. All employers are required to notify OSHA OSHA is doing its best to be proactive and improve
when an employee is killed on the job or suffers a work-re- on the timeliness of injury and illness reporting, and in its
lated hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye. A fatality response to inspect resorts when injury and illness reporting
must be reported within eight hours; an in-patient hospital- occurs. OSHA also wants to ensure employers are actively
ization, amputation, or eye loss must be reported within 24 communicating with employees and ensuring employees’
hours. rights under the OSH Act are not being violated.
It is very important to understand completely the root As OSHA becomes more proactive, resorts also have
cause of the incident before reporting to OSHA. For example, the responsibility to become more proactive with improv-
an instructor is riding the children’s lift with a student when ing employee safety and health programs. The benefit to
the instructor has a medical event such as a seizure and falls OSHA and the ski industry is fewer employee accidents and
from the lift. The instructor is taken to the emergency room injuries, along with reduced costs in workers’ comp claims
and is hospitalized overnight for observation. Should you and insurance costs. Those reductions allow resorts to put
report to OSHA because the employee was hospitalized? more money into resort operations, repairs, infrastruc-
I would not report this incident to OSHA, because the ture and, most important, even better employee safety and
employer was not responsible for the root cause of the fall, it health programs. After all, they are the ones that keep things
was natural personal event that caused the seizure and led to running day in and day out. Don’t we owe them the safest
the fall, and it was not anything the employer had responsi- working environment possible?
bility for.
“With this new electronic reporting under OSHA, ski John T. Barnard is a risk manager at Taos Ski Valley, Inc.,
areas should be especially careful when completing and sub- a former senior safety compliance officer and whistleblower
mitting this information, because it is now even easier for investigator, a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology,
plaintiffs’ attorneys to access this information,” said NSAA’s and a veteran of the US Navy.

48 | NSAA JOURNAL | CONVENTION 2017