Study: Newly Hired Injured Employees More Likely to be Reinjured
The Workers’ Compensation Institute highlights a new study authored by researchers at the University of Maryland and Dell Medical School in Austin suggesting that it is possible to identify employees at high risk of multiple injuries by looking at a simple proxy.
The study concludes that
employment time before the first lost-time injury occurs could be a predictor of future injuries on the job — regardless of underlying risk factors. Workers who sustained occupational injuries within the first six months of their employment were 2.12 times more likely to have at least three injuries during their entire employment at an organization compared to other workers.
The new study, “Do Work-Related Lost-Time Injuries Sustained Early in Employment Predict Multiple Lost-Time Injuries Throughout Employment,” was based on data from 5,906 injuries sustained between 1994 and 2017 among workers at The Johns Hopkins Health System and University. The research conclusions have been published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
The findings were similar to those in a 2013 study published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information that reviewed worker data from 1998 to 2003.
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