A few gins have called us recently regarding a letter or email from OSHA regarding their DART Rate. So what is a DART Rate and do you know what yours is? A DART Rate is a measure of injuries and illnesses and is designed to be able to compare industry to industry and individual companies to an industry average. It is SUPPOSED to eliminate the size factor so that you can compare apples to apples. DART stands for Days Away Restricted or Transferred.
Ideally, the DART rate is the number of injuries that would be lost time or restricted an employer with 100 employees would have in a year’s time. It is based on the 200,000 hour base for 100 employees at 2000 hours each. Employers record injuries with days away, restricted or transferred on their OSHA 300 form. For the past few years, nearly all employers have been required to send their OSHA 300A summary information (this includes the DART information) to OSHA. This has evolved in to some gins getting letters.
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