The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is developing a new voluntary and secure electronic occupational safety and health surveillance system that will help keep track of workplace data.

The first version of OHSN is limited to the healthcare sector (Healthcare Sector Component), but NIOSH says OHSN will be expanded to other industry sectors in the future. The OHSN Healthcare Sector Component focuses on non-infectious occupational safety and health issues among healthcare personnel (HCP), starting with a HCP Traumatic Injury Module.

OHSN, which will surve as a surveillance resource for U.S. workplaces, will be used to analyze and report workplace-specific and aggregated data to illustrate the magnitude of injury and illness events among workers and to monitor trends in these events.

NIOSH said participants will benefit by having the ability to benchmark a workplace’s internal rates and trends against aggregate data from similar workplaces
and assess the impact of prevention efforts on occupational health and safety over time

The OHSN Healthcare Sector Component focuses on non-infectious occupational safety and health issues among healthcare personnel (HCP), starting with a HCP Traumatic Injury Module. In addressing occupational health and safety within the Healthcare Sector, NIOSH is working with the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) Healthcare Personnel Safety Component, which includes modules to track infectious disease issues among healthcare personnel (e.g., Blood/Body Fluids Exposure, Influenza Vaccination).

Information concerning patient and healthcare personnel surveillance systems managed by CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion is available at The National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) webpage: www.cdc.gov/nhsn/hps.html.

Data collected in OHSN will be used for improving worker safety at the local and national levels. At the national level, NIOSH will analyze and publish surveillance data, in aggregate and without personal or hospital identifiers, to estimate and characterize the national burden of healthcare-associated injuries. At the local level, the data analysis features of OHSN will enable participating facilities to produce rate tables and graphs that compare the individual healthcare facility’s rates with the national aggregate metrics.