If you have been involved in a workplace injury, you know how expensive it can be. Even a minor injury can result in a run to the hospital, medical treatment, and a few days of missed work; a more major injury could lead to an extended hospital stay, rehabilitation and much else. You have to know what rights you may have to compensation during this process, no matter the cost.
As major as these costs may have been for you, though, looking at the cumulative impact is even more staggering. Some reports have indicated that the total cost of the workplace injuries that take place every year in Maryland alone could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
For just three years -- 2008, 2009 and 2010 -- these injuries incurred a total cost to the state that reached over $700 million. It topped out at a full $712.8 million.
The study that uncovered these numbers was done by Public Citizen, which is a nonprofit organization.
According to the report, the group recognized three different types of costs. For medical bills and the like, they referred to them as direct costs. Things like time that an employee had to spend at home during recovery, rather than on the job, are called indirect costs. The third category was referenced as costs relating to a person's quality of life. For example, if you went through a lot of pain and suffering because of your injury, you may have been able to get compensation for this, though there is not a direct amount of money tied to it.