ROLLING UP THE NUMBERS: INCIDENT DATA
COLLECTION THROUGH A WEB-BASED REPORTING
SYSTEM
Richard R. Johnson, CSP VP, Product Development
Comprehensive Loss Management, Inc.
INTRODUCTION
Reporting incidents related to employee injuries, vehicle crashes, liability claims and many others are integral to safety and risk management efforts within any organization. The resulting data needs to be accurate, timely and meaningful. Incident data is collected to find out not only what is happening in the organization, but why it is happening. When multiple individuals in multiple locations are responsible for reporting incidents, data collection can become difficult. In this paper, we will review process of incident data collection via web based systems and then look at how this was applied in several organizations and the challenges that they faced.
WHY DO WE REPORT INCIDENTS?
Incident reporting or “accident reporting” is one of the basic tools of the safety profession. All safety programs need to have a means of reporting when something goes wrong and hopefully have a way of learning from these incidents.
Whenever some thing bad happens, lots of stakeholders want to find out about it. The insurance company or TPA needs to have the claim filed so that the bills and obligations are paid. Organizations that keep OSHA records need to enter the incident on their OSHA logs within seven days. Companies that experience incidents with high potential for loss need to respond quickly to identify the cause and prevent similar incidents from happening. For these reasons, rapid reporting of incidents is important.
Apportionment of Liability
are at fault are the ones who pay. Permanency, lost wages, medical costs, claims costs, legal costs and many others are in the mix and need to be paid by someone. In the case of
worker’s compensation, the rule is straight forward—the employer pays—but out of which pocket? Claim costs for injuries filed thorough the claimant’s medical insurance provider often reduce the level of financial exposure to the employer. The employer still pays, but the total exposure is reduced. The better the information is regarding the facts of the case, the easier it is for the claims management process to correctly identify the appropriate payer for the claim. Accuracy and timeliness of reporting of incidents is an important part of effective claims management and cost control.
History Repeats Itself
Given a large organization with lots of the same types of exposures involving lots of
employees, it is likely that some types of incidents will repeat themselves. Whether it is back injuries, slips and falls or fender benders, the law of large numbers predicts that something will happen if given enough uncontrolled exposures. That is of course, if the organization does not learn from its mistakes and implement corrective actions to prevent the incident from happening.
The information needed to make the assessment of what is happening and why it is
happening requires more than a one line description on an insurance company or TPA’s loss run. Working with a food distribution company several years ago on a program to reduce the number of knee injuries, an analysis of the available data was performed in the hopes it could tell us how the injuries were occurring. We were looking for the specific actions that the employees were performing at the time of the injury so that we could devise an education program on the proper techniques to use while performing daily tasks. The data that had been collected over the years could tell us how many knee injuries happened, who they happened to, the location of the injury and several other relevant pieces of data including the total cost of the knee injury claims. What we could not determine was how the injuries were occurring and ultimately why they were occurring. There was no way to capture the on-site supervisor investigations and marry this information with the claim information being reported to the claims intake system.
Clearly in a large organization, the efficient and systematic collection of data can uncover trends and give direction to the safety program. Without the follow up to the “why and how” of each incident and correcting the process, given the same hazard exposures, history is likely to repeat itself.
How are we doing?
Incident reporting and the follow up analysis of the data can give us the means to determine how our program initiatives are working. Safety program elements cost money. Whether it is something as simple as a PPE program or as complex as a behavior based safety
observation program, we need to see if what we spent on the program is giving us a return on our resource investment. By evaluating the year to year results in the specific area of interest we can determine the success or failure of specific initiatives.
Supervisor Accountability
Accountability is simply a measured responsibility. If supervisors are responsible for investigating incidents and implementing corrective actions then there needs to be a way to enable the supervisor to meet the expectations of the safety program and measure the results of their efforts. One client had developed a culture where the supervisors assumed that they were too busy to complete the incident report and investigation form. The form was handed to the injured employee and the employee was asked to complete it. The supervisor signed the form and placed it in the interoffice mail to the safety department. There was no
perceived responsibility for completing the investigation and no initiative for correcting the causes that lead to the incident. As a result, the repeated types of incidents were common and ongoing
An effective and efficient incident reporting system can provide not only the information on the incident being investigated but completion of the reporting and investigation becomes a leading indicator metric of how long it takes to investigate an incident, and the effectiveness of the recommended corrective actions.
WHOSE DATA IS IT ANYWAY?
When an incident such as an employee injury or vehicle crash occurs, the employer is, at a minimum, obligated to filing a claim with the insurance company or TPA or in the case of employee injuries, enter the information on the OSHA 300 log. There are many ways to enter a claim into the TPA or insurance company system. You can use the telephone and speak to a claims adjuster who will interview you as to the nature of the claim. You can fill out a paper form and FAX it into the claims department or to the State. With many insurance companies or TPAs, you can now go to a web site and enter the claim. In each of these methods, data on the incident is being generated. Somewhere someone is typing this information into a computer and the claims process begins.
The claims reporting process or “claims capture” is the start of the data trail that resides on the systems of the insurance company or TPA. In most cases, you will get a periodic report in the format that the insurance company or TPA creates or you may be able to view this report on-line
A common experience among companies that start the data collection process with the insurance company or TPA is that it is difficult to get the information out of their system in a usable format. Something as basic as OSHA recordkeeping can be a real challenge in large organizations. If the data is captured in a system that allows for multiple uses, the OSHA log can be automated.
If you are depending on claims reports from your TPA or broker, you need to ask yourself:
• Is this the right data that you need to assess your safety program?
• Can you really get enough information in the 128-character description on the broker’s Loss Summary Report?
• What happens when you change insurance companies or brokers?
• How do you drill down into the incident data to find out why the incident happened?
• Should you capture the data yourself and feed the results to your stakeholders?
Getting incident data is an important part of effectively managing your safety and loss control activities. The more you can automate the process, the easier it is to identify trends and compare results within your organization.
WHY WEB BASED?
There is nothing magic about using the internet to report incidents. The internet is simply a means of connecting computers to an application that resides on a fileserver and allows the User to enter incident data with a pre-designed template. The control of the application resides on the server and the User accesses the system using a web browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer. The data gets added to the database and various reports can be generated to identify historical trends.
The web simply provides the means to connect users in your organization to a common database. In today’s “rolled up” organizations many times there are a number of different systems used for employee management, accounting or operations. Providing a common web-based incident reporting application system can improve data quality, timeliness and accuracy.
In some organizations, incidents are reported using any of a variety of network based software programs. The application may be a stand alone piece of software installed on the network or it may be a plug-in to their ERP-Employee Resource Planning software. Both PeopleSoft and SAP have systems that enable users to enter incident information and have the employee data drawn from the common database. Although many safety departments are using these systems, they were often purchased by the IT or HR organization with little thought to the needs of the User, the complexity of the system and the cost to customize the application. All of these issues can prove to be a hindrance to acceptance and utilization by the Users. Accuracy can degrade as Users avoid using the system or fail to report incidents. You are at the mercy of another company organization—the IT department or Human Resources to manage the system and provide updates and support.
Many boutique software applications have entered the market that takes advantage of the browser based interface to gather and report incident data. The key is to find a software vendor that can provide the features and flexibility that best matches your organization’s culture and management structure.
Advantages of a Web Based System
Web based incident reporting systems are becoming more common as organizations look to flatter organizations in dispersed work locations. Access to the internet is becoming the norm in organizations as more and more electronic communication, education and distance management tools are integrated into the daily operations. The advantages are many and include the following:
• Access to the system does not need to be integrated to or supported by the organization’s IT department
• Access to the system can be established from any place that has web connection at any time
• Graphical User interfaces can simplify the reporting process with point and click tools
• Real-time notification and real-time statistics are always available
• Hierarchical administration establishes accountability for data accuracy at the facility level
• Improved system security through centralized administration that can assign system permissions by responsibility department or facility
• Improved data backup and redundancy
• Automatic data tabulation and comparison between facilities, regions, divisions, etc.
• Instantaneous multipoint notification can be integrated into the system Potential Issues
A web-base incident reporting system may not be the best solution for an organization and it certainly does not replace traditional management and insurance company notification via established channels for critical incidents. If the plant is on fire, don’t run to Starbucks to report the incident—use the phone! A web-base application may not as good fit for smaller organizations with few locations due to added cost. Finally, customization of off the shelf systems may not be cost justified.
THE WEB-BASED INCIDENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Web based incident data management systems provide a wide array of tools and features to make it easy to get consistent incident reporting with a large group of Users who may be located in a dispersed work environment. The basic web designs can be enhanced with media rich instructions, hot links to help and downloads of tools and forms.
Fill in the blanks and the drop down list
We have all seen drop down lists on browser based applications and is a useful means of data entry. The list presents the selected few categories that the user must select to classify the incident. Address information like “State” has been used on e-commerce order entry screens
for years and this simple interface makes it easy for the User to give consistent information on incidents. Drop down lists and other structured interface tools offer several advantages:
• Makes completing the report faster and easier
• Eliminates creative writing by the User
• Categorizes the data elements into defined buckets of information for future data analysis
It is important to have a system that allows of the simple administration of the drop down lists. Often this can be accomplished with downloaded information from existing data management systems.
The Power of Validation
Validation is a process of looking for expected values in a data entry field and comparing them to the expected values for that field. In most cases, incident reporting systems are simply looking for some type of data entry in the field. This can be anything from intelligent information to gibberish. Traditional paper based incident reporting can be improved by forcing completion of all the data fields before the report is allowed to be submitted. Validation can also look for specific formats of data such as dates or phone numbers. Investigation Tools
A web-based incident reporting system can provide the tools needed for users to conduct the investigation. Although the system is intended to be paperless, simple data collection worksheets can provide prompts necessary to guide the investigator on a logical sequence of field note taking. Once the investigator gets back the office or gains access to the system the information can be efficiently transferred to the system. The goal is to make it easy for the investigator to consistently and quickly gather the information necessary to both enter the data into the system and to initiate corrective actions. Having access to a “cheat sheet” can improve data gathering efficiency and reduce the chances of having to go back to the field to collect information for the report.
Data Feeds
In most organizations there are a number of repositories of data that can be used in the incident reporting process. The trick is to get this data into the system in a manner that is seamless to the data collection process.
Rather than having the investigator re-enter information that is already in an existing database system somewhere, there are several advantages to tapping this information feed. Having pre-populated information on the screen reduces the amount of time to complete the data entry and improves data accuracy. Ironically, the data coming from known sources is not always accurate. The system should give the user the opportunity to either correct the data so that the report is submitted accurately and there needs to be a means for notifying the appropriate administrator that the data needs to be updated.
Date being fed into the system can come from a variety of sources including:
• Employee Census Data from ERP system or HR database
• Vehicle and Mileage data from Fleet Departments
• Hours data from Human Resources or Payroll
• Claims data from TPA, insurance carrier or broker
Each of these sources may use a different means of data transfer and will need to be evaluated for efficient system integration.
The first and foremost consideration of any web-based system is data security. Be sure that when data is entered by system users the interface is via Secure Socket Layer (SSL). SSL is used for all secure web transactions to assure that the data being transferred over the web cannot be compromised. Online banking and e-commerce sites have been using this technology to assure customer data security. Information on incidents needs to be treated with the same level of security to prevent both identity theft and potential liability for data loss. You do not want confidential employee data bouncing around the internet for anyone to see and steal.
Once an Administrator is in the system they can cut and paste data from a spread sheet or in some cases simply browse to a file on their computer and upload it to the database. The data is placed in appropriate locations in the database on the fileserver.
The other option is to take the human out of the process and have the system feed the data automatically through a series of database calls between known servers. Using mutually agreed to passwords, neither server will recognize a false attempt to gain system access. This hands-off method is best when automatic data transfer is needed at the highest level of
security.
Another method is to use File Transfer Protocol or FTP and is a means for transferring data files between computers. This simple and reliable method has been in use for many years and is a good way to get large amounts of data into another database. FTP is not a secure form of data transfer. The files being transferred need to be encrypted before being
transferred. Commonly used encryption protocols such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) allow locations to use a common key for encrypting and decrypting the files.
Once the data is in the database, it is a good idea to have information like Social Security Numbers, phone numbers, addresses, and such encrypted again to prevent the unintentional viewing by data managers and vendors not authorized to view this information.
Trend analysis: How many happened to whom and why
need for the vendor to create the report for you or to have the IT department have to create the report for you on their timetable.
Many safety professionals are obsessed about incident rates. This is the standardized method of comparing one work group against another using a standard rate per 100 employees who work 2000 hours per year. This normalization of the data can be used to judge progress or reveal problems. Goals can be set and achieved or missed. Charts can be created that provide visual impact. Managers can be held accountable. And jobs can be lost. All of this requires accurate timely data generated by the incident reporting system.
System Considerations
As a system is considered, there are a number of details to look at during the planning process. Many applications available today are based on the Application Service Provider (ASP) model that makes their software available to any organization that has access to the Internet. In this arrangement, the ASP develops and owns the software application and hosts the application on their web servers. The ASP is responsible for maintaining the software and servers, provides backup of the data and provides support and assistance to customers using the system.
When evaluating these types of software solutions, consider the following:
• Who administers and maintains the application?
• How do you control system access?
• Who has access to the data?
• How is the data backed up and how often?
• Where does your data reside?
• Does the system work with your hardware and your internet bandwidth?
• Is the collection system logical and easy to follow?
• Does the system do what you need it to do? Administration Considerations
Sometimes the easy part of putting in web-based incident reporting system is making the decision to get one. After that, the work begins. Be sure to consider the following:
• Who administers the system?
• What is the condition of the existing source data that may be entered into the new system?
• How are Users to be managed in the system and whose responsibility is it to enter them and control their access?
• Who will maintain User permissions in the system?
Configuration and Customization
No two companies collect data the same way. Names, addresses and phone numbers are pretty standard, but every operation has its own terminology and business structure. Users need to accurately self select the types of incident descriptions that apply to the facts of the case. If the system is configured correctly, the User acceptance improves and the accuracy of the data is assured.
Configuration is the means by which the software application is tailored to your operations using the existing Administrative interfaces. Drop down menus, user data, facility data and the like should all be able to be easily entered into the system.
Customization is changing or adding to the standard functionality of the software. Some software applications lend themselves to custom feature development and other developers are dead set against it. Customization involves programming and programming can be expensive.
If a custom application is being considered, the first step is to identify your process:
• What incident data do you want to collect?
• How does it get collected?
• How is it summarized?
• How is it reported?
Map out your incident reporting process—use pictures and flow charts to identify where the information comes from and where does it need to go. Next, compare the ideal process to the incident reporting system and look for gaps. Then ask yourself: “Can you live with an off-the-shelf system or do you need to make changes? Finally, balance the cost of the change verses the inconvenience of the system. Can you live with the limitations of the system or do you need to customize the application?
CASE STUDIES
Case Study 1: Paper Based Reporting changed to Web Based Reporting
This case involved a healthcare organization with 43 locations in the upper Midwest.
Operations include a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) and a network of clinics, labs and dental offices. Timely incident reporting and data collection was a major concern. Injury reporting was traditionally performed using packets of forms that were distributed to the clinics. Appropriate forms for the injury report and the various forms related to blood exposures were included in the packets. When an injury occurred, the supervisor or lead person would take the packet and remove the injury report form and give it to the injured employee with the instructions to complete the form and return it to the supervisor. The
Manager. This process took 1-3 days for the form to get back to the Safety Department. Information on the incident was then forwarded to the Infectious Disease Department for follow-up and recording of information related to blood exposures and needle sticks.
A web-based injury reporting system was developed that incorporated a number of features:
• Only the supervisor could access the system and were responsible for completion of the incident report
• Drop down menus were included to simplify the reporting process and to assist in the categorization of incident data
• Validation was built into the system that required key data field completion before the User could navigate to the next page
• After the entry of the demographic data into the system, the system searched for prior incidents related to the injured employee. Injury history was presented to the supervisor so that patterns of behavior could be noted and applied to potential corrective action plans.
• Notification of incidents was delivered to both the system Administrator and Infectious Disease department simultaneously
• An export function was created to send the data to an existing system for further data analysis
• The system was built with the logic to determine the severity of blood and needle stick exposures and to include the recommended treatment for the exposed individuals. The treatment recommendations, the laboratory paperwork and the medical releases are all generated automatically and are ready to print after the incident report is completed. The system has been in place for over three years and has improved the speed and efficiency of the incident reporting process. The information gathered has improved and supervisors are now taking a more active role in the management of incidents and incident repeaters.
Case Study 2: Replacing of a Network Based system with a Web based system
This case involved a medium sized manufacturer of lawn maintenance equipment, snow removal equipment and related lawn and garden products. Data collection for employee incidents was entered into an incident reporting system that was installed on a fileserver in the corporate data center.
Various problems were present with the network based system:
• Text fields were used in the User interface that did not limit the incident descriptions, therefore data descriptions varied.
• There was no centralized management of variable data description fields
• System performance depended on network connectivity to Access database at the corporate headquarters.
• System reliability was spotty in remote company locations
• Performance depended on quality of network connection and network traffic—remote location could not enter data without repeated system crashes
• Monthly data reconciliation required most of the resources of a full time person
A web-based injury reporting system was introduced in 2005. The following improvements were noted:
• Performance improved—system does not crash
• System can now be accessed from any location in the company
• Quality of data improved
• Data can be managed local at the individual facility location
• Data for reports can now be exported for further data manipulation
This system has been in place for almost two years and has received high praise from Users for its ease of use and from management for the quality and timeliness of the data being generated. One of the major changes to the reporting process was to place the responsibility for entering hours worked and classifying OSHA recordability at the local facility level. The local system administrator now has the power and responsibility to assure that the data is correct without having to depend on a central administrator in the corporate office. Case Study 3: Replacing of a Telephone Reporting System to a Web Based Reporting System
This case involved a national distributor of propane products to the residential and
commercial markets. The company has 600 locations and approximately 6000 employees. Historically, incident reporting utilized both an “800” call in system to the TPA and paper based system for investigation. Incidents involving employee injuries, vehicle crashes, 3rd party liability, customer propane incidents and plant releases were all captured with this system. Five different forms were used depending on the type of incident that occurred. Phone calls to the TPA were answered by staff that was unfamiliar with the industry
terminology and the local operations and as a result, phone calls were time consuming. If the incident involved both an employee injury or a 3rd party claim along with a vehicle claim, multiple phone calls were needed to be placed to two different vendors. There was no sharing of information and the interview process was repeated.
The main objective of the web based system was to change from a call-in process to a web reporting interface. A weekly data feed from the human resource database was used to populate employee census information and employee data drop down menus. Vehicle data was loaded monthly to pre-populate vehicle drop down lists to simplify the selection process and improve accuracy of selection.
An initial user interface was developed to allow the users making the reports to select from a list of incident types. The new system supported multiple incidents or multiple individuals
individual sub events and all of the costs of these individual incidents can be rolled together in a summary report.
The system is designed to automatically export the incident information to the TPA system four times per day. The supervisor completing the report does not need to phone in the information to the TPA except in cases of life threatening injuries or catastrophic events such as major fires or explosions.
The customization of the system and the associated required features was completed in less than 12 months. At the time of this publication, the system was being piloted in several parts of the country and the early response has been very positive.
CONCLUSION
Incident data management is a critical part of the safety and loss control function in any organization. Unless a process is measured, it cannot be managed. Although the reporting, investigation and management of incidents is a straightforward process, adding the
complexity of a multiple location operation demands that structured electronic data
collection be implemented and maintained to increase the efficiency and accuracy of of the data collected. A web-based incident reporting system can provide a user friendly means of collecting data from a dispersed operation, provide information for the filing of claims and provide the data needed to analyze safety program needs and successes.
