Workers' Compensation Codes

When you set up or report on workers' compensation information for your company, you must be familiar with certain codes.

Injury Codes

A commonly used set of workers' compensation injury codes are predefined on the Workers' Compensation Injury Groups and Workers' Compensation Injury Codes forms. These codes are generally accepted for use with workers' compensation claims by most states and provinces. However, you can add codes as needed.

Injury codes are divided into these types:

Cause of Injury
Nature of Injury
Part of Body

After you select a type, you can select a group of that type. You can then select codes from that group, as shown in the examples.

Type C - Cause of Injury:

Example group: III. Cut, Puncture, Scrape Injured By
Example codes in the "Cut, Puncture, Scrape Injured By" group:
- 15. Broken Glass
- 16. Hand Tool, Utensil, Not Powered: Needle, pencil, knife, hammer, saw, axe, screwdriver
- 17. Object Being Lifted or Handled: Being cut, punctured or scraped by a person or object being lifted or handled
- 18. Powered Hand Tool, Appliance: Drill, grinder, sander, iron, blender, welding tools, nail gun
- 19. Cut, Puncture, Scrape, NOC: Not otherwise classified in any other code, Includes power actuated tools

Type N - Nature of Injury:

Example group: Specific Injury
Example codes in the Specific Injury group:
- 01. No Physical Injury: Glasses, contact lenses, artificial appliance, replacement of artificial appliance
- 02. Amputation: Cut off extremity, digit, protruding part of body, usually by surgery, i.e. leg, arm
- 03. Angina Pectoris: Chest pain
- 04. Burn: (Heat) Burns or scald. The effect of contact with hot substances. (Chemical) burns. tissue damage resulting from the corrosive action chemicals, fume, etc., (acids, alkalies)
- 07. Concussion: Brain, cerebral
- 10. Contusion: Bruise - intact skin surface hematoma

Type P - Parts of Body:

Example group: Upper Extremities
Example codes in the Upper Extremities group:
- 30. Multiple Upper Extremities Any combination of below parts, excluding hands and wrists combined
- 31. Upper Arm Humerus and corresponding muscles, excluding clavicle and scapula
- 32. Elbow Radial head
- 33. Lower Arm Fore Arm - radius, ulna and corresponding muscles
- 34. Wrist Carpals and corresponding muscles
- 35. Hand Metacarpals and corresponding muscles - excluding wrist or fingers
- 36. Finger(s) Other than thumb and corresponding muscles

Initial Treatment Codes

These codes classify the initial treatment of the injury, for example, no medical treatment, emergency care, or minor treatment by employer.

The codes from the IAIABC are predefined on the Workers' Compensation Initial Treatment Codes form. However, you can add codes as needed.

Classification Codes

Workers' compensation class codes determine the risk of injury, and therefore affect the insurance premium rate, for a specific industry or type of job.

Different states use different classification systems or have significant variations in classification rules. For these reasons, SyteLine does not predefine a list of class codes. Use the internet to find the appropriate codes for the states or provinces where your company does business, and then provide the information in these forms:

Specify the default WC Industry Classification Code for your company on the Tax Parameters form. This NAICS code is shown on the Workers' Compensation Data Collection Organization form and can be changed there.
Specify the NCCI-defined WC Class Code for a particular employee position on the Deduction and Earnings Code form.

State and Jurisdiction Codes

Use information from the Workers Compensation Insurance Organizations web site (wcio.org) to populate the Workers' Compensation abbreviation, code and jurisdiction fields for each state and province on the Prov/States form. These fields cannot be predefined because the states and provinces are not predefined on this form.

A jurisdiction refers to a state requirement or applicability.