Recordable: what goes on the log
A case is recordable under 29 CFR 1904.7 when a work-related injury or illness results in any of the following: death, days away from work, restricted work or transfer to another job, medical treatment beyond first aid, or loss of consciousness. A significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician or other licensed health care professional is also recordable even without those outcomes.
"Medical treatment beyond first aid" is where most judgment calls live. OSHA resolves it with an exclusive first-aid list in 1904.7(b)(5)(ii) — items like non-prescription medication at non-prescription strength, cleaning surface wounds, bandages and butterfly closures, hot or cold therapy, and drilling a nail to relieve pressure. If the treatment is on the list, it is first aid no matter who provides it; if it is not on the list, it is medical treatment.
Recording a case is not an admission of fault, negligence, or compensability — the rule says so explicitly. The log is a census of injuries, not a ledger of blame.
Reportable: when you must call OSHA
Separately, 29 CFR 1904.39 requires every employer covered by the OSH Act — including small and low-hazard-industry employers exempt from the log — to report severe outcomes directly to OSHA:
- Work-related fatality: within 8 hours of learning of it, if the death occurred within 30 days of the incident.
- In-patient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye: within 24 hours of learning of it, if it occurred within 24 hours of the work-related incident.
- Report by phone to the nearest area office, the 24-hour OSHA hotline, or the online reporting form; State Plan jurisdictions designate their own agency contact.
The distinctions that decide close calls
In-patient hospitalization means formal admission to the in-patient service for care or treatment. An emergency-room visit alone is not reportable, and neither is admission purely for observation or diagnostic testing.
The clocks start when the employer learns of the event, and the look-back windows differ: a fatality is reportable if it occurs within 30 days of the incident, while a hospitalization, amputation, or eye loss is reportable only if it occurs within 24 hours of the incident. A late-developing hospitalization outside that window is not reportable — but the underlying case may well still be recordable.
Why the confusion is expensive
Failure-to-report citations are essentially self-inflicted: the event was severe enough that OSHA usually learns of it anyway, and a missed 8- or 24-hour window is simple to prove. A report also frequently triggers an inspection or a Rapid Response Investigation, so the moments after a severe incident are the worst possible time to be improvising process.
The reliable pattern is to treat reporting as an escalation path inside incident intake: capture the facts once, evaluate severity immediately, and let the recordability analysis follow at its own 7-day pace.
Frequently asked questions
Severity triage built into intake
SafeGora's incident intake surfaces the 8- and 24-hour reporting questions the moment facts arrive, keeps the human decision on record, and carries the same facts into the log.