Do you run a home health care agency where employees use their own car? If so, it is essential that you have a specifically designed implemented driver safety policy. Home health care agency employees often find themselves pressed for time. It would be understandable for an employee to feel obligated to drive a little recklessly to make it to their job in time. On top of this, one of your employees may be traveling with a customer, further increasing your liability.
According to the Labor Department, the leading cause of work-related fatalities involved vehicular accidents. 23% of all work-related deaths were due to vehicular accidents to be exact. This number leads to an estimated $250 billion dollars of expenses handed on to employers. These expenses are not to cover the cost of the auto accident itself(and all the injuries that may incur), but workers compensation costs as well as increased insurance premiums.
Home Healthcare Driver Safety Tips
- Have an MVR reporting system. This is where employees’ driver’s license is run automatically to identify candidates or employees with unsafe driving records. Any time an employee commits a driving infraction you will know right away. By hiring safer drivers, you reduce a large chunk of your risk associated with your business.
- Some agencies run a yearly report and think this is enough, but drivers can get in trouble a week after the report is done. This happens more often than you think! CLICK HERE for more info on an MVR Reporting Service.
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- Make sure your employee handbook states that employees who will be driving their own vehicles must have purchased at least $500,000 worth of auto liability insurance.
- This way, if an employee gets into an accident, it is his/her policy that is first in line. If your employees are only carrying the minimum amount of insurance, you can be responsible for the remaining amount of damage. Make sure to check your employees’ auto liability coverage on a yearly basis to avoid being liable.
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- Make sure to have hired and non-owned auto liability insurance. This will protect your business from liability when you or your employees are driving their own vehicles for work-related purposes.
Before working for Metropolitan Risk, I worked for a pool maintenance/cleaning company. My duties often consisted of driving from house to house to clean pools and check up on heaters and filters. While I was able to avoid getting into any accidents, a co-worker of mine was not as lucky. After getting into an accident on the open road, our employer was completely liable for the charges. Had he not neglected to take any insurance precautions earlier, he would have saved a lot of money. Don’t cut corners with your business, it will catch up to you in the long run.
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Make sure to follow these steps to keep your risk and your costs as low as possible. If you have any further questions and wish to speak to an advisor, give us a call now at (914) 357-8444!
Photo by Sam Trotman on Unsplash 
