Accident Review Board Drives Change

April 1, 2019

Creating a culture immersed in safety is critical to mitigating creeping claims trends. United Heartland partner, Elim Christian Services – an organization that serves individuals with disabilities – put controls in place to create a safer environment for their employees and individuals served. Elim has since seen a dramatic improvement.

In 2012, due to increasing loss frequency and severity, UH agent partner, Ed Young Jr. of The Horton Group, suggested Elim form an accident review board. The idea was well-received by Elim’s leadership team, and later that year, the Accident Review Board (ARB) was established.

The ARB is a committee whose goal is to provide a safer working environment for employees and individuals served. The committee treats each accident as a learning experience and identifies opportunities to prevent similar types of accidents. Comprised of members from the executive, leadership and human resources teams as well as the insurance agent, insurance agency safety consultant and a member of the UH loss control team, the ARB meets once a month to review employee accidents that occurred during the previous month. The employee and their immediate supervisor attend the meeting to provide a detailed description of how they were injured, and together, the entire team discusses how to improve to prevent recurrence of similar accidents.

Since the ARB was formed, several areas of improvement have helped the organization reverse the increasing claim trend, which includes:

• Engaging the leadership team in improving safety
• Allocating capital to improve safety
• Improving accident reporting, investigation, root cause analysis and corrective action
• Hiring additional staff that specialize in behaviors (Board Certified Behavior Analyst)
• Working with external behavior consultants
• Purchasing new protective equipment for staff
• Changing the organization’s behavior management program
• Implementing the improvements that are discussed during the monthly meetings

The tables below outline the impact the Elim Accident Review Board has had since October 2012. In addition to improved data points below, the team at Elim has noticed a marked improvement in employee morale and safety culture.

About Elim Christian Services: Each day, over 900 individuals with disabilities turn to Elim for educational, vocational and therapeutic programming. Over 400 staff members serve these children and adults on one of Elim’s two campuses (Crestwood, Illinois, and Orland Park, Illinois). Hundreds of children are also served within one of 14 Christian schools nationwide that partner with Elim Outreach.  https://www.elimcs.org/

To learn more, contact your UH loss control representative at 800-258-2667.