Don Silva got involved with ergonomics in the late 1990s, through his work
as chair of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island’s in-house safety committee.
He wanted to know more about the causes of common employee injuries, and their
impact on the company’s workers’ compensation costs.
æWhat he found was that carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis and neck and back problems among Blue Cross workers were costing tens of thousands of dollars a year Ð both in terms of workers’ compensation claims and in lost workdays.
Blue Cross wasn’t alone. Silva found statistics showing that nationwide each year 1.8 million workers in the United States report work-related musculoskeletal disorders, from carpal tunnel syndrome to back injuries.
Such injuries account for 34 percent of all injuries resulting in lost workdays, Silva said – nearly 600,000 cases per year.
Overall, they account for $1 of every $3 spent on workers’ compensation, or $15 billion to $20 billion per year. Add all other expenses, such as the cost of replacing injured workers, and the total is as much as $50 billion.
“It’s actually staggering, the amount of monies that are involved,” he said.
Unlike most other kinds of workplace injuries, Silva added, repetitive stress injuries and back problems can’t be linked to one-time events – an accident, a fall. An employee can begin developing a wrist problem at one job, but not feel enough pain until years later, at a different job, and that new employer is stuck with the costs.
“I tell people ergonomics is a time bomb waiting to go off, because you don’t know when a problem’s going to surface,” Silva said.
Silva decided to try to defuse the time bomb, and working with Warwick-based The Beacon Mutual Insurance Company, Blue Cross’ workers’ compensation carrier, he began to study the claims and look for patterns: problem departments, types of employees involved, specific circumstances surrounding the injuries.
As part of its loss-prevention efforts, Beacon also offers free ergonomics training to its policyholders, with specialized information for offices, manufacturers, etc.
Silva took full advantage of that. He and two other Blue Cross employees learned how to educate workers about good posture, the proper angle at which to type and look at a computer screen, how to sit, and how to relax muscles. And with the insurer’s help, Blue Cross built a comprehensive workplace ergonomics program.
All new employees now go through an ergonomics orientation, Silva said, and Blue Cross provides educational materials to its entire staff showing how to prevent and alleviate problems. One-on-one ergonomics evaluations are done frequently.
The results have been so impressive that Silva’s work is showcased as a “Success with Ergonomics” model on the federal Occupational Health & Safety Administration’s Web site, one of about three dozen nationwide. Lost workdays declined by 74 percent from 1999 to 2001, from 345 to under 100. The number of workers’ compensation claims was cut in half. Claims also fell significantly, from $227,620 in 1999 to $26,010 in 2000.
The big savings are possible, Silva said, because the cost of each case that gets bad enough to require time out from work – or worse, surgery – is huge. Figures that Beacon has provided him, he said, show that a single carpal tunnel syndrome case can cost $8,000 to $12,000 in direct costs and $16,000 to $48,000 in indirect costs, when surgery is not required. Throw surgery into the mix, and costs triple.
So Blue Cross tries to catch problems before they get so serious.
“I tell people, you have to listen to your body very closely. If your body tells you that something hurts, find out what it is,” Silva said. The company also has ergonomics posters on the walls, and Silva is working on an ergonomics Web site.
Having become one of the local experts in ergonomics, Silva – who is actually a systems analyst at Blue Cross, but also has a master’s degree in education – has now become a resource for other businesses. Blue Cross makes him available, free of charge, through its speakers’ bureau, and he offered training at this year’s Business Expo. But he said he has found few Rhode Island employers pay enough attention to ergonomics.
Not surprisingly, the state Department of Health is among those who do take ergonomics seriously. It’s addressed as part of a general worksite wellness program, a spokeswoman said, and furniture is chosen to be ergonomically appropriate.
Brown University doesn’t offer ergonomics training, spokesman Mark Nickel said, but its Office of Environmental Health & Safety does help individual employees to adjust their workstations, and its Web site links to the OSHA ergonomics site.
Citizens Bank reported having no ergonomics program at all. The Providence Journal Company, on the other hand, was very proactive in the late 1990s, educating and evaluating its workers individually. But the effort has fallen by the wayside, personnel director Thomas McDonough said, due to budget cuts in recent years.
Silva said Blue Cross has been “lucky” to have relatively few serious cases of musculoskeletal disorders. It helps, however, that management understands the importance of prevention, he said, and is willing to invest in it.
“It’s a lot cheaper to do that to have somebody out of work for two months,” he said.
