Last month, after considerable delay, the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration started a new web page that allows employers to make online reports of employee injuries and illnesses. The online resource was prompted by recent changes to OSHA’s injury reporting rules that require employers to notify the agency of employee hospitalizations and amputations within 24 hours of occurrence. The prior rules only required such reporting in the event of hospitalization of three or more employees.

The electronic notification system may also be used to notify OSHA of employee fatalities within the eight-hour reporting period. This website should only be used in states that do not maintain their own OSHA enforcement programs. For states with their own programs (such as North Carolina and South Carolina), reports should be made through web portals already established by those state labor agencies. Employers still have the option of reporting injuries by telephone. The new federal OSHA web page can be found at: https://www.osha.gov/report.html.