Definition of terms

A work-related accident is an accident an employee suffers at work or outside the place of work, for example on the roads.

A commuting accident is an accident an employee suffers while travelling to or from his place of work.

A reportable accident is a work-related accident or commuting accident which is either fatal or leads to an incapacity to work for more than three days.

A reportable accident in the scope of pupil accident insurance is a school accident or school commuting accident which is either fatal or leads to medical care having to be provided.

A new accident pension is a work-related or commuting accident for which compensation was paid for the first time in the year under review either in form of a pension, a lump-sum or a death grant.

A fatal accident is registered in the statistics if it happened within the year under review and within 30 days following the accident.

All companies of the industrial sector are divided into branches of industry which are based on the branches of the companies.

An equivalent full time employee is a factor used in calculating the incidence of work-related accidents. One equivalent full time employee is equivalent to the number of hours actually worked on average in one year by a full-time employee in industrial and public sector and is therefore a reflection of the period of exposure to the risk of work-related accidents.

The average risk of a work-related accident is calculated by the number of work-related accidents, divided by 1,000 equivalent full time employees (accident rate).

An insurance relationship is any relationship between an insurer and an insured person based on legal ordinance, bearing in mind one person may have multiple insurance. Weighted according to the different number of times a person commutes within different insurance relationships, it is used as a basis for calculating the frequency of commuting accidents since every insured activity also entails the risk of a commuting accident (weighted insurance relationship).

Any notification of a suspected case of occupational disease (PDF, 107 kB, non-accessible) (OD) has to be registered. Physicians and employers are obliged to register these cases. In addition the accident insurance institutions receive reports from other social insurance institutions and even from insured persons.

A recognized occupational disease (OD) is registered in all cases in which it has been proved in an adjudication procedure that the person is indeed suffering from the occupational disease.

For some diseases, the confirmation of the occupational causation must coincide with additional insurance conditions, e.g. some diseases must have forced the person to refrain from all endangering occupational activities. Because an occupational disease is not recognized until special conditions are fulfilled, the group OD confirmed was introduced. Therefore the recognized occupational diseases are a subset of all cases in which an occupational disease is confirmed. This group is very important for all questions concerning prevention.

If the existence of an occupational disease is recognized and the reduction in earning capacity entitles a person to a pension or the diseased person died in due to an OD, this usually serious illness is called new OD pension. Those cases constitute a subset of recognized occupational diseases.