13 years of Disabling Work Injuries in the U.S. (1998-2010): Direct Costs from the Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index

Background
We established the Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index (LMWSI) in 2000 to provide a reliable annual metric of the direct cost burden of the most serious non-fatal workplace injuries in the U.S. and to rank the top 10 causes of injury by burden.

Methods
Three data sources were used to build the metric: The BLS survey of occupational injury and illness, Liberty Mutual workers compensation claims (WC) data, and the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) estimates of total US WC benefits paid.  Innovative data linkage methods, including narrative text analysis, were employed to produce the Index and adjustments were made to take into account economic factors and underreporting.

Results
Approximately 600 billion dollars in direct WC costs were spent on the most disabling non-fatal injuries and illnesses in the American workplace from 1998 to 2010; The overexertion (13.6 B dollars, 2010) and fall on the same level (8.6 B dollars in 2010) categories were consistently ranked 1st and 2nd over the period.  Other causes varied in rank with some of the biggest shifts occuring during the economic downturn.

Conclusion
Although workplace injuries are among the leading causes of death and disability around the world, the burden due to workplace injuries has historically been under-recognized, obscuring the need to address a major public health problem.  The LMWSI has provided an on-going benchmark for organizations and individuals interested in better understanding the burden of workplace injury on an annual basis and has contributed to the national and international discussion of workplace injuries as a public health priority.