Occupational Health and Safety

Consistent with our Mission to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life for patients, Medtronic proactively pursues continuous reduction of risk, injuries, and illnesses in our workplaces. This commitment is demonstrated in our Environmental, Health and Safety Policy. Our efforts minimize production interruption costs, increase productivity through avoidance of injury and property damage, and institute production-enhancing ergonomic solutions.

Health and Safety Certifications

  • Four Medtronic facilities have maintained their Occupational Health & Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001 Certifications: Deggendorf, Germany; Galway, Ireland; Shoreview, Minnesota, USA; and Woodbury, Minnesota, USA.
  • Our Deggendorf, Germany manufacturing site continued its ILO-OSH 2001 Certification.
  • Our Tijuana, Mexico production facility achieved Safe Company Certification.

Medtronic is developing a strategy to obtain multiple-site EHS certifications. We will determine the scope of our initial efforts and future scheduling during fiscal year 2011.

Employee Injury Rate

Medtronic tracks the following employee work-related injury and illness metrics:

  • Incident Rate: The number of work-related injuries or illnesses serious enough to require treatment beyond first aid, per 100 employees working a full year.
  • Lost/Restricted Work Day Case Rate: The number of work-related injuries or illnesses serious enough to cause an employee to miss one or more work days or to have one or more work days of restricted duty, per 100 employees working a full year.

Medtronic has maintained very low incident and lost/restricted workday case rates. In fiscal year 2010, the company incident rate (IR) was 1.0, compared to 1.01 in fiscal year 2009 and 1.16 in fiscal year 2008. Likewise, our lost/restricted workday case rate (LWCR) was 0.47 in fiscal year 2010 compared to 0.42 in fiscal year 2009 and 0.50 in fiscal year 2008.

Performance in our Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management, CardioVascular, Diabetes, Neurological, and Physio-Control businesses showed continuous improvement in injury risk reduction. These businesses focused on job hazard and incident analysis programs, employee involvement, proactive ergonomic programs, and education.

Medtronic had no work-related deaths in 2010.

Compliance

In fiscal year 2010, Medtronic had 28 health and safety related inspections (e.g., health departments, OSHA, etc). Citations were issued on three of the inspections, with total fines of $1,470. In fiscal year 2009, there were 23 such inspections.  Citations were issued on two of the inspections, with total fines of $3,450.