Reporting Serious Injuries

Employer's First Report of Injury (EFR)

Process guidance for workplace injury.

If anyone working for you has been seriously injured, we may need to report the incident to OSHA within 8 hours of the time the accident occurred. This is true whether they're a temporary, contract, volunteer, student worker, or regular UCSC employee, and regardless of their status as full or part time. A serious injury would be the loss of any body part, any serious permanent disfigurement, death, or hospitalization for longer than 24 hours for anything other than observation.

The eight hour time limit does not allow waiting overnight or through a weekend or holiday, and the penalty for late reporting is $5,000 assessed to the injured employee's department. If your employee went to the hospital, you need to follow up and determine if they are going to be released or not - and if you cannot be certain they will be released within 24 hours, you should call to avoid the penalty citation. There is no penalty for reporting and then finding out the injury was not severe enough to require the call, so it is far better to call when it may not be needed than to delay the decision past the deadline.

If you even suspect that an injury in your unit may meet the reporting criteria, please call EHS at 9-2553 to let us know. We will help you decide whether a report is necessary, and will make the call to OSHA for you. If you need to contact us outside of normal office hours, please call campus dispatch at 9-4861 and ask them to page the EHS person on duty. We have someone available 24/7 and will respond. OSHA may schedule an inspection to review the incident, and we will also assist you with this process. Always call EHS if someone identifying themselves as an OSHA employee visits your workplace.

For work-related injuries, follow the guidance for workers' compensation reporting available at the Risk Services site. For a quick summary of the reporting rules, see here.