Documenting
Occupational
Histor y
THE VALUE TO PATIENTS,
PAYERS, AND RESEARCHERS
By Sara E. Luckhaupt, MD, MPH; Geoffrey M. Calvert, MD, MPH;
and Marie H. Sweeney, PhD
Recording patient work history is vital to identifying work-related injuries and illnesses. As electronic
health records become widespread, this is an important time to ensure occupational health data
elements are included in EHR standards.
THE OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY and Health Act of 1970 was
written to protect workers from work-related injuries and ill-
nesses; however, they are still common in the United States. Of
the estimated 139 million working Americans:
x 15 die from a work-related injury every day;
x 3.9% will experience a nonfatal injury or illness annually;
and
x Approximately 49,000 will die annually from an occupa-
tional disease. 1, 2, 3
Although the relationship of some injuries to occupation may
be obvious and some diseases are well known to have occupational causes (e.g., mesothelioma from asbestos exposure), other work-related diseases are underrecognized. Reasons for this
include the following :
x The clinical and pathologic expression of most occupa-
tionally caused diseases is indistinguishable from that of
nonoccupational origin
x Many diseases of occupational origin are multifactorial,
with nonoccupational factors playing a contributory role
