DATE:

March 24, 2014

TO/DEST:

Executive Director, Ottawa Police Services Board

FROM/EXP:

Chief of Police, Ottawa Police Service

SUBJECT/OBJET:

WORKPLACE ACCIDENTS AND INJURIES:

2013 ANNUAL REPORT

RECOMMENDATION

That the Ottawa Police Services Board receive this report for information.

BACKGROUND

This report is provided to the Ottawa Police Services Board (Board) to meet the Chief’s requirement under the Occupational Health & Safety Policy (Policy CR-15). The policy states that:

“On an annual basis, the Chief of Police shall provide an Occupational Health and Safety Report to the Board that reports on the frequency and severity of injuries, and the effectiveness of the policy and programs in place.”

The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) is well aware of the inherent risks associated with policing and cares about the health and safety of the women and men who are members of the service. Through policy, monitoring, training and practice the OPS seeks to reduce the chance of workplace accidents and injuries. These events can affect individual members and the OPS in a variety of ways. Direct impacts include: pain and suffering experienced by injured members; monetary costs associated with compensation and treatment of injured members; and a decreased number of OPS members available to serve the City of Ottawa. Indirect impacts include things like reduced member morale, suboptimal resource use and diminished operational performance.

This report contains a conventional analysis of incidents, injuries, and illnesses that occurred in OPS workplaces in 2013. Relevant information is summarized, and tabulated. Some standard health and safety statistics are calculated and analyzed. Data from 2013 are compared with data from previous years. This report also includes a summary of initiatives that will be taken to help reduce accident, injury and illness rates in 2014 and beyond.

DISCUSSION

Incidents, Accidents and Injuries Summary

When a member becomes injured or ill due to a workplace event, or becomes aware of an event that could have caused an injury or illness, the member is required to report the incident to a supervisor. Supervisors must document each incident by completing an Injured on Duty Report (IODR). IODRs are submitted to Health, Safety & Lifestyles (HS&L), a unit within The Resourcing and Development Directorate. HS&L processes the reports, follows up with OPS stakeholders, and fulfils any third-party reporting requirements necessary for regulatory compliance.

Table 1 provides a summary of the 390 IODRs that were submitted in 2013. A total of 138 reported incidents required first aid or medical attention. Half of those, or 96 incidents resulted in lost time from work.

Table 1: Summary of all Injured on Duty Reports Submitted in 2013.

Incident Severity Category	Description	Number of Incidents
Incident Only	An incident occurred that could have resulted in an injury or illness. These incidents are sometimes called “near misses” or “close calls”.	156
First Aid	An injury or illness occurred, and first aid was administered. No external health care was sought.	41
Health Care	An injury or illness occurred, and external health care was sought from a doctor, chiropractor, or physiotherapist. No time was lost from work beyond the date of injury or illness.	97
Lost Time	An injury or illness occurred, health care was sought, and time was lost from work beyond the date of injury or illness.	96
Total		390

WSIB –Reportable Injuries and Illnesses

“Health Care” and “Lost Time” injuries and illnesses must be reported by the OPS to the Workplace, Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB). Consequently, these types of injuries and illnesses are referred to as “WSIB-reportable”. Table 2 provides a more detailed breakdown of the 193 WSIB-reportable injuries and illnesses that occurred in 2013.

Table 2: Summary of WSIB-reportable Injuries and Illnesses from 2013.

Injury/Illness Category	Description	Number of Injuries
Musculoskeletal	Includes sprains, strains, soft tissue injuries, and repetitive strain injuries.	71
Other	Not covered by any other defined injury category.	31
Exposure	Exposure to a biological or chemical agent.	31
Contact	Occurs when a member strikes (or is struck by) a person or object.	21
Slips Trips Falls	Occurs when a person falls.	21
Transportation	Occur as the result of a motor vehicle accident.	12
Assault	Result when member is assaulted by another person.	6
Total		193

The most frequent injury from 2013 was “musculoskeletal”. Musculoskeletal injuries include things like sprains, strains, soft tissue injuries, and repetitive strain injuries. Direct causes of these types of injuries can be very diverse.

Other noteworthy findings from the 2013 WSIB-reportable injury and illness data include:

- 86% of injuries happened to sworn members (14% to civilian).

- 50% of injuries to civilian members and 35% of injuries to sworn members were classified as musculoskeletal (included strains, sprains, and soft tissue injuries).

- 40% of injuries to sworn members involved pursuing, arresting, or otherwise interacting with non-compliant individuals.

- 5% of injuries to sworn members occurred during training activities.

Frequency and Severity

Frequency and severity rates are statistics that are used in many industries to help evaluate safety performance. Frequency refers to how often WSIB-reportable injuries and illnesses occur. Severity refers to how long injured and ill workers tend to stay away from work in the event of a “Lost Time” injury or illness. Table 3 summarizes the OPS’s frequency and severity rates from 2011 to 2013.

Table 3: Frequency and Severity Rates for 2011 - 2013.

Statistic	2011	2012	2013	Interpretation
Frequency (%)	11.74	9.80	10.30	In 2013, approximately 10% of OPS members reported an injury or illness that resulted in the need for medical care and/or time away from work. Frequency was 5% higher in 2013 compared to 2012.
Severity (Hours)	148	160	184	If an OPS member missed work due to an injury or illness in 2013, the average amount of time away from work was 184 hours per injury or illness. Severity was 15% higher in 2013 compared to 2012.
FTEs Lost	6.9	7.0	8.5	When all 2013 lost time for all members is added together, the equivalent of 8.5 full-time employees was off work for the entire year due to injury or illness. FTEs Lost was 21% higher in 2013 compared to 2012.

Compared with 2012, the frequency of WSIB-reportable injuries and illnesses increased by 5%, and the severity of lost time injuries and illnesses increased by 15%. That means that OPS members were injured or became ill at work more frequently and more severely in 2013. The total equivalent FTE loss in 2013 increased by 21% compared to 2012.

Year-to-year variations in frequency and severity rates are normal. In 2011, the OPS began using enhanced data collection protocols to allow for more meaningful data analysis. As the OPS continues to collect and analyze data in future years, the ability to provide statistical analysis will improve. This will enable for objective determination of whether or not observed year-to-year variations are significant in nature, or simply within normal variation.

OPS Trends

Table 4 shows the number of Injured on Duty Reports received by the OPS between 2011 and 2013. Compared to 2012, the numbers of Incident Only, Health Care, and Lost Time injuries and illnesses in 2013 increased by 9%, 4%, and 5%, respectively. The number of First Aid injuries decreased by 20%. The total number of IODRs submitted increased by 3%.

Table 4: Number of Injured on Duty Reports: 2011 – 2013.

Incident Severity Category	2011	2012	2013
Incident Only	164	143	156
First Aid	42	51	41
Health Care	124	93	97
Lost Time	97	91	96
Total	427	378	390

There is year-to-year variation in the numbers of IODRs submitted. As mentioned, as the OPS continues to collect and analyze data in future years, the ability to provide meaningful statistical analysis will improve. This will enable for objective determination of whether or not observed year-to-year variations are significant in nature, or simply within normal variation.

Comparisons to Other Employers

There is very limited public or published police-specific data against which the OPS can compare workplace injury and illness statistics. Provincial associations (e.g. Public Services Health & Safety Association of Ontario, Ontario Police Health & Safety Association) are working with the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board in an attempt to produce data against which individual police services can compare their own frequency and severity rates in a meaningful way. In the interim, the OPS will continue to reach out to other Ontario police services to try to gather information about intra-industry injury and illness rates.

Direct Costs

Direct WSIB costs associated with injuries and illnesses are summarized in Table 5. WSIB direct costs include things such as wages, health care costs, pensions, survivor benefits, non-economic loss costs and administrative fees. Costs for 2013 were $2,593,077. These costs were approximately 17% higher than the costs for 2012. Many factors contributed to increased costs in 2013. These include increased frequency and severity rates for workplace injuries and illnesses; increased WSIB administrative rates (up to 35.80% in 2013 from 31.77% in 2012); and increasing health care costs and physicians’ fees.

Table 5: Direct Costs of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses for 2011 – 2013.

Year	Cost
2011	$2,070,678
2012	$2,222,367
2013	$2,593,077

A significant portion of costs ($850,931) are associated with permanent WSIB awards related to individuals who are away from work indefinitely due to workplace injuries or illnesses. These injuries or illnesses occurred before the amalgamation of the Ottawa Police Service and some of those individuals will never return to work. The OPS cannot affect those costs. However, the OPS can help reduce costs moving forward by taking measures to minimize the frequency and severity of new workplace injuries and illnesses.

Indirect Costs

Workplace injuries and illnesses can cause many indirect costs, including:

- Decreased worker productivity;

- Loss of operational efficiency;

- Decreased worker morale;

- Diminished service performance; and

- Increased administrative effort spent on early and safe return to work efforts.

It is difficult to quantitatively evaluate these indirect costs. However, conventional estimates suggest that the ratio of indirect costs to direct costs may commonly range from 1:1 up to 5:1. That means for every $1 spent on payment of direct costs, it would be reasonable to estimate that between $1 and $5 dollars is lost due to the types of indirect costs. Using direct costs from 2013, associated indirect costs for the OPS are estimated to be $2,600,000 or higher.

Recommendations

The OPS should take all reasonable precautions to create and maintain healthy and safety workplaces. This, in turn, will help minimize workplace injury and illness rates. As outlined by the Occupational Health and Safety Act and OPS Policy 3.06: Health and Safety, everyone at the OPS has a role to play in the creation and maintenance of healthy and safe workplaces.

The following table summarizes some specific initiatives that will be taken by the OPS in 2014 in an effort to help reduce injury and illness rates.

Table 6: Selected 2014 Health & Safety-related Initiatives.

Initiative	Anticipated Outcome
Continued Refinement of OPS Occupational Health and Safety Management System	Systematic method for helping identify and manage risks to help reduce the number of injuries and illnesses.
Conductive Energy Weapon Assessment	Study the viability of using CEWs to reduce risk of injury for our members.
Ergonomic assessments for individual workstations and specialized applications	Identification and mitigation of risk factors that can contribute to musculoskeletal injuries.
Occupational Health & Safety Awareness Training	Improve safety awareness at all organizational levels.
Improved Accident Investigation protocols.	Give supervisors skills and resources to reduce injuries and illnesses by improving capability to identify, assess, and control risks.
Continued focus on Early & Safe Return to Work	Minimize the amount of lost time without increasing the risk of further harm.
Use of Force Training	Enhancement to approaches to take downs.

CONSULTATION

There has been no formal public consultation regarding the contents of this report. The Occupational Health and Safety Act prescribes that reports of this nature must be shared with specific stakeholders. Consequently, consultation with the Ottawa Police Joint Health & Safety Committee will be scheduled before the end of Q1, 2014.

FINANCIAL STATEMENT

Total direct costs of from 2013 were as follows:

Budgetary Line Item	Amount Paid
501093 – WSIB Admin Charges	$311,857
501094 – WSIB Permanent Awards	$850,931
501194 – WSIB Payments	$956,345
Salary advances (wages)	$402,776
Salary advances top-off	$71,078
Total	$2,593,077

Total direct costs in 2013 were estimated to be $2,593,077. Payment of fees in full was mandatory on a monthly basis for regulatory compliance reasons. Non-compliance will result in fines imposed by the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board. There are no options for choosing different levels of service for WSIB coverage. A portion of costs is recurring and constant. A portion of costs varies with WSIB usage rates.

CONCLUSION

The health and safety of our members matters and the OPS will continue to work to create and maintain healthy and safe workplaces for OPS members. This will help to optimize member health and safety, and minimize the various costs associated with workplace injuries and illnesses.

(original signed by)

Charles Bordeleau

Chief of Police

Responsible for report: Director General Debra Frazer