Programs and Initiatives

Baxter's occupational health and safety teams are working to continually improve the company's health and safety performance with the following programs and initiatives:

Addressing Sources of Injury and Risk

Hazard identification (HI) and risk assessment (RA) enables Baxter to understand and tailor programs to address the main causes of employee injuries and illnesses. For example, this type of analysis in 2010 led to the identification of Baxter’s Renal Home Patient Delivery drivers as an area of focus. Delivering renal dialysis supplies into patients’ homes poses significant physical demands and challenges. Baxter’s safety team formed a task force to address this group’s needs, which resulted in benchmarking with multiple companies that perform similar work and enhancing post-accident analysis tools and data analysis strategies. Baxter’s environmental, health and safety (EHS) team also focused on the company’s Contractor Safety Policy and program to redefine higher risk activities that warrant increased planning and risk mitigation.

Ergonomics

Thirty-one percent of Baxter’s recordable cases were related to ergonomic risk factors in 2010, along with 36% of cases with days lost, 43% of days lost and 49% of restricted days. Baxter has a long-term commitment to reduce ergonomic risk, and has committed resources to support facilities in related efforts. One of the most effective means of reducing ergonomic risk is to build optimal ergonomic design into workstations and work tasks. In recent years, increasing automation at Baxter facilities has had a positive impact. Ergonomic injuries related to repetitive motion have decreased, while injuries related to manual handling tasks and work stations increased and remain a challenge. In 2010 Baxter created a guidance tool available in three languages, for engineers to use when developing or modifying workstations. The "Ergonomics for Engineers" guideline was launched in the first part of 2011 via webinar and streaming video.

Baxter also enhanced focused training for engineers in 2010 on ergonomics, anthropometrics¹, biomechanics² and design principles that reduce ergonomic risk. The company piloted this training at its Castlebar, Ireland, facility.

Baxter continues to use a 10-Point Ergonomics Program Self-Assessment designed to help facilities identify program strengths and gaps. This tool allows Baxter to better understand the particular characteristics of specific sites and direct resources to facilities with the greatest need. In addition, in 2010 Baxter continued to support specific projects and engineering training services to targeted facilities.

The Baxter EHS intranet features ergonomics pages that offer a wide range of resources, tools and training materials. The company also provides services that support ergonomic workstation design principles to facilities and employees upon request.

Fall Prevention

Slips, trips and falls were the source of 20% of recordable injuries, 31% of cases with days lost, 28% of days lost and 20% of restricted days in 2010. This represented a significant increase in frequency compared to 2009 for each category except restricted days. Slips, trips and falls remain one of the industry’s most prevalent causes of injuries and will remain a focus area at Baxter.

In 2010, Baxter’s corporate health and safety team worked with the company’s Mountain Home, Arkansas, United States, manufacturing facility to better understand the site’s needs in addressing this issue. The team designed an analytical mapping tool that allows facilities to plot the location of all slips, trips and falls to determine high-risk areas or functions and analyze common causes. The team also developed self-assessment tools and inspection checklists. Baxter then incorporated these resources, along with a slips, trips and falls-prevention webinar and other training and support tools, into an internal website focused on fall prevention.

Near-Miss Reporting Programs

Employee engagement is key to creating and maintaining a safe work environment. One effective means to involve employees in safety is to encourage them to identify, report and eliminate sources of injury before they cause an incident. This includes reporting near misses, which are unplanned events, conditions or actions that did not result in injury, illness or damage – but could have. Baxter defined the elements needed for an effective near-miss program, and then assessed whether these elements were in place at facilities. Ninety-one percent of facilities analyzed were determined to have a near miss program in place using these defined criteria (exceeding the goal of 75%).

Driver Safety

Mobile devices represent a significant distraction risk while driving. To address this, during 2010 Baxter approved a global policy to improve employee safety while operating vehicles on company business that:

• Expands the current policy to cover all mobile devices, not just cellular phones;
• Requires that mobile devices, if used while driving, are used "hands-free"; and
• Prohibits texting and using computer programs while driving.

The company will implement this policy, along with various training tools, in 2011.

Other Major Sources

Following ergonomic injuries and slips, trips and falls, needlesticks represent another major source of injury.

Needlestick injuries, occurring most frequently in Baxter’s BioLife and Renal Therapy sites, accounted for 13% of the company’s recordable cases in 2010, down from 18% in 2009. This decrease reflects Baxter’s recent heightened focus on this area. During 2010, the company evaluated the equipment employees use for plasma collection as well as phlebotomy techniques, and implemented improvements to decrease risk.

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Employee and Family Health and Wellness

A healthy, productive workforce is vital to achieving Baxter’s goals and those of its employees. Through BeWell@Baxter, the company’s global employee health and wellness effort, Baxter strives to create a culture that promotes work-related and personal health, raises awareness about these issues and supports individual accountability and engagement.

BeWell@Baxter provides employees and their adult family members with access to a Personal Wellness Profile, offered in 12 languages. Thirty-two percent of employees worldwide have completed this confidential personal online health analysis as of the end of 2010.

In 2010, the company launched two major health promotion campaigns based on risk factors identified through health analysis. The BeWell@Baxter Exercise Challenge was held in May and encouraged employees to make a commitment to regular exercise. Twenty-four percent of all employees from 80 facilities globally (about 11,700) participated. See Case Study: BeWell@Baxter: Global Exercise Challenge and Healthy Eating Month.

In November, the company focused on a global nutrition campaign aimed at arming employees with healthy eating strategies that could be used year-round. Thirty-eight percent of all employees from 90 facilities worldwide (about 18,600) participated in “Healthy Eating Month” events, many of which included family participation.

In 2010, Baxter continued to encourage employees to protect themselves against seasonal influenza through vaccination. The company offered seasonal flu vaccination at no charge to 95% of its employees worldwide, and 37% of employees received vaccination during the 2010/2011 flu season. This is slightly lower than the previous year, when 40% of employees were vaccinated. This is thought to be related to the heightened awareness in 2009/2010 due to swine flu, which resulted in increased vaccinations.

In 2008, Baxter launched its vision for global smoke-free campuses. By the end of 2010, 86% of company campuses were smoke-free, with many more facilities committed to making the transition in 2011.

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Case Management

Occupational health case management seeks to obtain care for injured employees from qualified providers to improve health outcomes and shorten disability time. Effective case management depends on early intervention, appropriate treatment and engagement with the injured employee. Focusing on prevention and case management benefits employees and helps Baxter manage the medical treatment costs of work-related injuries and improve the company’s days lost and restricted days performance. Proactive case management also allows employees to return to the workplace sooner, enhancing site productivity and employee morale.

Baxter’s occupational health team uses 10 criteria to measure case-management program implementation at large sites (100 or more employees). Facilities must implement at least eight of these criteria to qualify as having a program. In 2008, the team also established five criteria to measure program implementation for small sites (25 to 99 employees). Those sites must implement all five criteria to qualify as having a program. By the end of 2010, 95% of large sites and 89% of small sites had implemented case management programs for a total of 91% of sites with 25 or more employees, exceeding the company’s goal of 85%. The occupational health team has held quarterly webinars on case management since 2005. These meetings feature medical topics of global interest as well as issues aimed at strengthening U.S. workers’ compensation claims handling.

As a result of Baxter’s multidisciplinary approach to work-injury management, the average paid cost per claim has declined by 13% since 2006, compared to an average increase in the industry of 30%.³ Incident avoidance and case management have saved Baxter an estimated $8.9 million since the company launched its case management program in 2004. During that period, Baxter’s overall costs in this area have declined while average costs in the industry have increased.⁴

View detail regarding Baxter's Risk-Based Approach to Occupational Health Case Management.

1	Anthropometrics is the study of the dimensions and abilities of the human body.
2	Biomechanics is the science concerned with the internal and external forces acting on the human body and the effects produced by these forces.
3	"Workers Compensation Strategic Outcomes Report," February 23, 2011, prepared by Broadspire for Baxter.
4	Ibid.