Do Physician office practices have to report contaminated sharps injuries?
The bloodborne pathogen standard applies to all healthcare employers with employees that have exposure to blood or potentially infectious body fluids, including contaminated sharps. However, the requirement for reporting any occupational injury or illness including contaminated sharps will vary by employer. In the past, there was a recordkeeping exemption for worksites that had 10 or fewer employees. However, OSHA’s recordkeeping standard (29 CFR Part 1904) was revised in 2002. This revision specifies that recordkeeping exemptions now apply to employers based on their SIC (standard industry classification). For example, the SIC category “offices and clinics of medical doctors (SIC 801) is exempt from recordkeeping reporting requirements unless an incident results in a fatality or hospitalization of three or more workers. This means, in this example, that the recordkeeping exemption for offices and clinics of medical doctors would include an exemption for maintaining a sharps injury log
