Baltimore's DPW underreported workers' heat-related illnesses, Office of Inspector General says
BALTIMORE - The Office of the Inspector General in Baltimore City found the Department of Public Works omitted the number of heat-related illnesses reported by employees.
In a new report released Tuesday, the OIG stated it found discrepancies between data submitted by DPW and the Department of Risk Management.
The OIG requested records for reports of heat-related illnesses for DPW employees between January 2021 and July 25, 2024, which was the date the request was made.
Risk Management provided records for 26 heat-related illnesses, while data from DPW listed 16 instances during the same timeframe.
"With the Department of Public Works, ten of the instances were omitted from what was given to the Office of the Inspector General and what was concerning was that was almost 40 percent of the incidents," Inspector General, Isabel Cumming said.
About a week after the OIG made the data inquiry, DPW employee Ronald Silver II died on the job from hyperthermia.
The report also stated DPW's spreadsheet was not sequential and some rows appeared to be removed.
Among the cases left out, employees reported suffering from symptoms such as dehydration, blacking out due to the heat and vomiting.
In response to the OIG, DPW wrote in part that this should not have occurred:
Evidently, when DPW staff obtained the heat-related illness report from Sedgwick, they noted and omitted instances they believed were first described as heat-related but, upon evaluation, were not. Specifically, they used the classification in columns K and L in the report to determine whether an illness was heat-related. If that was not explicitly stated on the report, it was omitted as staff believed that was the official determination by Mercy Hospital as to the cause of the illness.
You can read DPW's full response here.
The OIG stated the missing information could be an obstruction in the multiple ongoing investigations, and therefore was turned over to law enforcement to review.
A full report is expected to be published in December.