City Employee Safety - Days Away Restricted or Transferred (DART) Rate YTD

Desired Result:  Below Target

 
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Analysis of Performance
Note: This historical data of this metric changes in subsequent time periods because injury data is tied to the date of injury regardless of when treatment occurs or the case changes from recordable to time away restricted, or transferred. For example, if an employee has an injury in March but he does not seek medical treatment until June, it will be captured on March's OSHA log and it will not show up on the June log. National benchmark data for any year is only available in September of the following year. There is an approximate 18 month lag time in current available national benchmark data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The rate of Days Away Restricted or Transferred (DART) is below our goal.

The DART rate represents the injuries that required a higher level of care and treatment. By reducing this rate, the City is reducing the number of people who are injured to the point of being on modified duty or are missing work.



Continue safety partner work, which includes:

    • Safety training
    • Process/Task evaluation
    • Process Improvement
    • Recommending alternate equipment that could reduce injury
    • Creation of policy to better protect workers
    • Advocate for change across the City to help improve safety
    • After Action Reviews
    • Work with Workers Compensation Specialist to identify return to work options
  • Physical demands assessments (PDA) are being used to proactively to identify high hazard work and working on changes to process, equipment, or frequency to reduce future injuries.
  • Safety partners and the senior workers compensation specialist are working to identify modified duty opportunities across the City. The work on developing PDAs helps us know the requirements of a job, communicate that effectively to the Workers Compensation Physician, who can make an informed decision on an injured employee returning to their job. If they cannot return to their regular position, based on their restrictions, SRM can provide PDAs for other positions where work is needed that the physician can review and potentially approve for modified duty. The inured employee does not need to find modified duty in their own department, the modified duty can be done across the City. Recreation has been a strong partner in helping SRM place injured employees from other departments.
Metric Definition
The Days Away Restricted or Transferred (DART) rate calculation is based upon the number of work related injuries and illnesses severe enough to cause an employee to be temporarily reassigned or miss work completely in relation to the total number of employee hours worked. This is a nationally recognized standard safety metric. Current-year benchmarks are not available as they are published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and have an approximate 18 month lag time.
Why Is This Important?
DART rate is important because it is a nationally benchmarkeable measure widely accepted as representative of injury severity in the workplace.  It is important for the City to provide a safe workplace for all employees and the only way to achieve that is by driving a culture of proactive safety built on continuous improvement.  As safety efforts drive down injuries and injury severity, the costs associated with workers' compensation claims can be driven down as well.  The reduction of days away, restricted or transferred is directly related to reduction in lost productivity as well as lost efficiency because only workgroups that are whole can operate at optimal performance.
City Organization Impact on Performance
High – Reducing the DART rate requires the City to reduce the number of injuries that result in days away, restricted or transferred. Getting employees back to work quickly and efficiently following injuries enables to the City to spend less money on benefits used to keep employees who are off or on modified duty whole. Many studies have led to the well accepted fact that employees who return to work quickly following an injury rehab faster, better, and more completely than those who do not.  Driving down injuries that impact the DART rate requires workgroups to be engaged and to actively interact with injured workers to get them back to work as efficiently as medically possible.  This engagement in conjuction with other ongoing proactive safety efforts has concrete and continuous impact on improving the City's safety culture.
Benchmark Information
This metric contains General Industry and Public Entities benchmark data. The General Industry benchmark gives overall context to the City's performance, while the Public Entities benchmark allows for a closer comparison that accounts for the unique challenges that face local governments.