OSHA’s Emergency Temporary Standard has Arrived: What Healthcare Employers Should be Doing Right Now | Crowe & Dunlevy

On Monday, June 21, 2021, the OSHA’s provisional emergency standard (ETS) was officially published in the federal register, which leaves insured employers in the healthcare sector until July 6, 2021 in order to comply with the majority of the rule. Insured healthcare employers are not required to comply with the physical barriers, ventilation, and training sections until July 21, 2021.

As a refresher on our previously published recommendation, the rule generally applies to all settings in which an employee provides health care or health support services, but allows for some specified exceptions. First, all healthcare employers should carefully analyze whether or not they are subject to the rule by reviewing OSHA’s interactive employer coverage table.

If your company is under the ETS and you have more than 10 employees, you should proceed with creating a detailed COVID-19 plan to identify and control COVID-19 hazards in the workplace. When creating the plan, you should seek the opinion of your employees as they will be best placed to see the daily impact of the COVID-19 security logs. OSHA provides an intuitive COVID-19 plan template that outlines all of the necessary provisions that you need to include in your plan.

Affected employers should immediately implement the safety requirements identified in the ETS to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace, with regard to the following: patient screening and management, standard and broadcast-based precautionary measures, personal protective equipment (PPE), including face masks or respirators, physical distancing and barriers, cleaning and disinfection, health screening and management, training, records and reporting procedures. OSHA’s COVID-19 Health Care Workplace Checklist and Workplace Hazard Analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the steps employers should take to prepare their workplace (s) to implement the policies and procedures required by the ETS.

Above all, the ETS, similar to the long-expired law on the first coronavirus response from families, requires employers in the healthcare sector with more than 10 employees, Benefits of medical removal protection if the employee is removed from the workplace due to a positive COVID-19 test or symptoms related to COVID-19. Under the ETS, larger employers with more than 500 employees must continue to provide the employee with benefits and regular pay that the employee would have received in the absence of an absence from work, up to $ 1,400 per week until the employee meets the ETS return to work criteria .

The same requirements apply to employers with fewer than 500 employees, except that from the third week of the employee’s layoff, the payment is reduced to just two-thirds of the employee’s regular salary, up to $ 200 per day. These medical removal protection benefits apply to all Employees (e.g., doctors, nurses, canteen and hospital administrative staff). The new pay obligation does not prevent the employer from reducing the amount of compensation if the employee takes paid sick leave or administrative leave. Therefore, an employer may wish to clarify in their COVID-19 plan under the ETS that an employee will be entitled to any accrued paid or administrative leave during periods when the employee is removed from work due to a positive COVID-19 illness must take. 19 test or related symptoms. And an employer is not required to provide these benefits to an employee who refuses to take a COVID-19 test.

While many of the features of the ETS feel like an added administrative burden for healthcare employers, the main purpose of the ETS is to reduce the spread of the virus to healthcare workers in the hopes of providing them with clear and unambiguous job protection.

source https://dailyhealthynews.ca/oshas-emergency-temporary-standard-has-arrived-what-healthcare-employers-should-be-doing-right-now-crowe-dunlevy/