July 24, 2013; Hilary Niles; VTDigger
Ninety-nine thumbs, 574 lower backs, three big toes. Fifty-nine falling or flying objects, 72 respiratory disorders, 315 lacerations. Those are just a few figures from an unofficial roster of injuries suffered by state employees on the job in the past five years.
$40 million. That’s an estimate of how much the state will pay in workers’ compensation claims for the same period.
All those numbers could be lower, says State Auditor Doug Hoffer. He recently turned his sights on the Office of State Employee Workers’ Compensation and Injury Prevention, which manages workers’ compensation for state employees and also recommends ways to make them safer.
Looking at 124 cases — a representative sample of 4,825 workplace injury “incidents” among state employees from 2008 through 2012 — Hoffer said he was most surprised by two findings: That not all of the incidents are being reviewed, and that a significant number of safety recommendations are never adopted.