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Whether you are a dental office, vet clinic, or general medical provider, implementing OSHA protocols offers numerous benefits and holds a lot of importance. OSHA compliance ensures the health and safety of your medical office. It enforces and establishes optimized health and safety practices that take into consideration you, your workers, your office, and your patients.
Since OSHA regulations play an integral role in maximizing people’s well-being, compliance is crucial, especially in the dental field. With people’s lives at risk, failure to comply leads to serious repercussions. Here are the three major consequences of not following OSHA requirements.
Payment Penalties
The most common form of consequence is payment penalties. The department of labor splits OSHA compliance failure into five major categories of violations:
- • Serious
- • Other than serious
- • Posting requirement
- • Failure to abate violations
- • Willful or repeated
Each type of violation comes with a consequential fine. According to OSHA and the department of labor’s 2022 penalty updates, “serious” offenses lead to fines up to $14,502. “Other than serious” and “posting requirement” violations come with a range of $0–$14,502 in penalty fines. “Willful or repeated” violations cash in up to $145,027 per violation. All previously mentioned payment penalties occur per violation cited. Factors like the seriousness of injuries and the ratio of compliant and incompliant employees also affect the final penalty payment you owe. “Failure to abate” costs $14,502 per day failed to abate.
Risk of Imprisonment
Depending on the seriousness of the violation and attempts to resolve failed compliance, sometimes the consequence of failure also puts you at risk of imprisonment. Putting people’s lives in danger is unethical and shouldn’t be taken lightly, hence the enforcement of jail time consequences. Willful compliance violations, under OSHA standards, are classified as criminal offenses. Jail time varies per offense, the gravity of seriousness, and related injuries and deaths.
Serious Injuries and Risk of Death
All workplaces possess dangers. OSHA regulations enforce set protocols to minimize and eliminate workplace hazards. Failure to comply and implement the best health and safety practices listed leads to more than just legal repercussions. It allows those work dangers to negatively affect your workers, putting them at risk of injuries and sometimes even death. In any dental office, numerous dangers lurk. Failing to combat those hazards and optimize work conditions can cause serious injuries and life threats.
The consequences of not following OSHA requirements vary due to numerous factors, like the type of violation and seriousness. Whether you face legal or life-and-death consequences, any repercussion negatively affects your business. It reduces workplace performance, reputation, trust with patients and workers, and your practice’s general health and safety.
Avoid any and all consequences with proper OSHA compliance. Successful compliance involves training with OSHA compliance manuals and various other enacted health and safety measurements. At Gamma Compliance, we offer a range of compliance manuals for different offices, including dental compliance training manuals. The safer your practice, the better you treat your workers, optimize your business, and avoid repercussions.