Identifying work-related injury and disease in routinely collected NSW hospitalisation data

Occupational disease and injury has been estimated to account for nearly three per cent of the global burden of disease. In NSW in the 1998–99 financial year, there were 38 069 workers’ compensation cases reported to the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission. However, this figure is an under-estimation of the true incidence of occupational disease and injury in NSW, because it includes only cases resulting in compensation under NSW workers’ compensation legislation, it only includes cases involving absences from work of five days or more, and because self-employed people are not generally covered for workers’ compensation. This article describes an analysis of the NSW Inpatient Statistics Collection (ISC) to identify work-related hospitalisations,
and comments on its potential for monitoring occupational disease and injury in NSW.