By David Womack, Ph.D.
Safety and Health Manager, HSEQ & ARSC Owners Advisory Committee Chair

Medication non-compliance is simply not taking your medications as prescribed.  It can lead to unnecessary progression, poor outcomes, disease complications, a lower quality of life, increasing healthcare cost and even premature death.  It is estimated that between $100 billion and $300 billion of avoidable healthcare cost in the United States are due to medication non-compliance and non-adherence.  And yet we wonder why the cost of our health insurance is going up every year with less coverage and higher deductibles.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have published these statistics below concerning medication non-compliance.

• 20% - 30% of new prescriptions are never filled at the pharmacy
• 50% of patients with chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure or diabetes do not take medications as prescribed
• For patients prescribed medications for chronic diseases, after 6 months, the majority take less medication than prescribed or stop the medication altogether on their own
• Only 51% of patients taking medication for high blood pressure continue taking their medication during their long term treatment

By James Hinton
Director, EHS&Q

As we all know under the OSHA ACT the requirement for workplace inspections is a legal requirement. The need for these workplace inspections is also a necessary part of our effective safety programs. The use of routine workplace inspections have been proven over time to have positive impacts on identifying existing and potential hazards in the workplace. As Safety professionals we then take this data and utilize it to correct hazards in house and make sure they do not happen again.

By R. Ronald Sokol, CSP
President and CEO of Safety Council of Texas City

Now on to the governmental affairs update. The first thing I’d like to comment on is the monumental change of how things now get done in Washington. It’s called governing by Executive Order (EO). To illustrate my point, let’s look at the governing strategies of the past four President’s as it relates to the use of EO’s during their first 100 days in office. President Bush issued 13 EO’s during his first 100 days. President Obama issued 34 EO’s during his first 100 days and President Trump issued 39 EO’s. President Biden has issued 60 EO’s during his first 100 days and one of the first EO’s was to instruct the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to develop recommendations to modernize regulatory review aimed at reversal of the Trump EO that required two regulations to be eliminated from any governmental regulatory agency before one new regulation could be proposed. I believe the next four years will witness a greater increase in governmental oversight. Speaking specifically in the areas of safety and health, I anticipate a greater emphasis on the enforcement of worker safety and health regulations. Democrats introduced a labor rights bill called the PRO ACT that would allow the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to levy fines against employers who violate workers’ rights, give employees more power to participate in strikes, weaken so-called right to work laws, and offer certain independent contractors the protections held by employees.

By Trish Ennis CSP, ARM, CRIS

Executive Director, Colorado Safety Association

Managing risk on a large project or energy campus is a critical activity for protecting business assets. Requiring suppliers and contractors to go through a prequalification process is one element of reducing risk. A comprehensive prequalification process will enable an owner to benchmark the financial strength, risk management procedures, and safety performance of a potential contractor against acceptable standards. There are numerous services available to provide these prequalification services to owners, such as ISNetworld, Avetta, PEC Safety, BROWZ, Ariba and many other prequalification systems. 

By James Hinton
Director, EHS&Q

In the early stages of the vaccination process many employers were not wanting to mandate or participate in vaccinations of employees after hearing of people getting sick or ill after receiving a vaccination. OSHA’s initial response to employees having negative reactions, getting sick or missing work was very detrimental to most employer’s decision not to participate as the initial OSHA response was that anyone who had side effects from a vaccination mandated at work or given at the workplace would require reporting under 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements. This along with General Council advice to not participate or mandate vaccinations did have some effect on workplace vaccination mandates and participation from some larger employers nationwide.