Thought Leadership

Health Care Workers Compensation Barometer Actuarial Analysis, November 2018

The fourth edition of Aon’s biennial Health Care Workers Compensation Barometer report, which explores trends in frequency, severity and overall loss rates related to workers’ compensation in the health care industry.

This study is designed with health care risk managers in mind, to enable them to measure, maintain and reduce their workers compensation exposure, “measure” themselves against their peers, “maintain” standards of practice and safety levels, and “reduce” their overall cost of risk. Because of the unique demographic of hospitals, a benchmark that enables risk managers to compare to their health care peers is valuable for controlling the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events.

Download the 2018 Health Care Workers’ Compensation Barometer Report-Executive Summary (PDF)

Other noteworthy key findings from Aon’s report include:

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, health care occupations are projected to be among the fastest growing occupational groups during the 2016–26 projections decade, contributing about one fifth of all new jobs by 2026. Health care workers face a wide range of hazards on the job; including needlestick injuries, back injuries, latex allergy, violence, and stress. Although it is possible to prevent or reduce health care worker exposure to these hazards, health care workers continue to experience injuries and illnesses in the workplace. Cases of nonfatal occupational injury and illness among health care workers are among the highest of any industry sector.

New in 2018, we also collected employment practices liability claim information from nine health care systems. The database of health care employment practices liability claims consists of over 2,500 non-zero claims, representing over $203 million in incurred loss dollars over a ten accident year period (2008 through 2017). The estimated head count full-time equivalents represented in this database is approximately 314,000 for the 2017 calendar year.

Participation in the health care workers compensation benchmark was open to Aon clients and non-clients. Aon is solely responsible for the design, conduct and interpretation of the barometer analysis and holds the copyright thereto.