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EVALUATION
OF TARGETING METHODS
HIGH HAZARD AND LOSS CONTROL
The High Hazard and Loss Control programs in the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health were established by the 1993 workers’ compensation reform legislation. In response to concerns about their effectiveness, the Commission decided to engage in an evaluation of statutorily required safety efforts in California and a survey of such programs in other states. In addition, this would form the basis for developing methodologies to evaluate such programs nationwide.
Description
The project is being conducted in three phases:
Phase1
The first phase is a survey of the targeted safety efforts in the fifty US states and the Canadian provinces, in cooperation with the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions (IAIABC). The focus of the survey will be the implementation of the OSHA mandate for implementation of targeting and intervention directed at the most hazardous employers. The results of the survey will be assembled into a report identifying the various types of targeting and intervention undertaken by each state and province. A typology of approaches will be described and the estimated success, as evaluated by the states and provinces, will be identified, where possible, for each type of approach. Finally, states and provinces with approaches and data that allow reliable evaluation will be identified for possible inclusion in the third phase.
Phase2
The second phase is an evaluation of the California program’s impact on safety and health. The proposed methodology would compare the pre and post intervention experience of employers identified through the high hazard targeting or insurers regulated loss control efforts with similar employers who had nearly as poor safety records but were not targeted. This methodology is designed to assess both the efficiency of the targeting and the effectiveness of the intervention.
Phase3
The third phase applies the methodology used in the second phase to evaluate programs in other states and provinces. The first phase survey will have identified each state’s or province’s program characteristics which may prove more or less efficient at identifying the most hazardous employers and intervening to improve their safety experience. The survey will also have identified which of these states/provinces have the data available to meet the requirements of the methodology in the second phase. Through the IAIABC and the Occupational Safety and Health State Plan Association (OSHSPA), states will be recruited to participate in a comparative evaluation of various approaches.
This project is in process.