California's 8-Hour Serious Injury Report: How Section 342 Differs From Federal OSHA
Last reviewed Aug 28, 2026
If you learned severe-injury reporting under federal OSHA and then took a job in California, almost everything you know is close enough to be dangerous.
The short answer
Under 8 CCR §342, a California employer reports a serious injury or illness to Cal/OSHA within 8 hours. Not 24. The eight hours applies to hospitalizations, not only to fatalities, and California counts any inpatient admission rather than only an overnight stay for treatment.
The four differences that matter
| Federal OSHA | Cal/OSHA | |
|---|---|---|
| Fatality | 8 hours | 8 hours |
| In-patient hospitalization | 24 hours | 8 hours |
| What counts as hospitalization | Overnight, for treatment | Any inpatient admission, any length, other than for observation or diagnostic testing |
| Death following the incident | Reportable within 30 days of the incident | No time limit |
| Also reportable | Amputation, loss of an eye | Amputation, loss of an eye, any serious degree of permanent disfigurement |
The 24-hour minimum and the old "loss of a body member" language were removed by AB 1804 and AB 1805, effective January 1, 2020. Guidance written before then, and there is plenty still circulating, is wrong on both points.
Tracking this in a spreadsheet?
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The afternoon admission problem
Here is the case that catches people. An employee is admitted at two in the afternoon and discharged at eight that evening after a procedure. No overnight stay.
Federally, that is arguably not a reportable hospitalization. In California it plainly is, because the admission was for treatment rather than observation, and the clock was eight hours from when you knew.
If your process is "check in the morning whether anything needs reporting", you have already missed it.
When the clock starts
Not at the injury. Section 342 says the employer must report when it "knows or with diligent inquiry would have known" of the serious injury or illness.
Those are two different things, and the second one is doing real work. An employer that has arranged not to find out is not thereby excused. In practice the clock starts at the first moment a supervisor, manager or occupational health could reasonably have known, which is often earlier than the moment somebody filled in a form.
What is excluded
Two exclusions, both narrow:
- Injuries from an accident on a public street or highway, unless it happened in a construction zone.
- Injuries caused by the commission of a Penal Code violation.
Record which exclusion applied and why. "We decided it was not reportable" is not a defensible position eighteen months later; "the collision occurred on a public highway outside any construction zone, per the police report" is.
Reportable is not the same as recordable
This is the single most common confusion in this area, and it is worth being blunt about.
Recordability under §14300 (or 29 CFR 1904 federally) asks whether a case goes on your 300 Log. Reportability under §342 asks whether you must telephone the regulator, and how fast.
They are different questions with different answers. A case can be reportable within eight hours and not yet recordable, because you do not yet know whether there will be days away. A case can be recordable and never reportable. Folding the two decisions into one process makes both of them wrong.
What to actually do
- Put the eight-hour rule, the Cal/OSHA number and the exclusions on one page, physically posted where after-hours staff will find it.
- Decide in advance who can make the call at 3am, and give them authority to report without waiting for approval. Over-reporting costs a phone call. Under-reporting costs a citation.
- Record the moment you knew, separately from the moment of injury, on every serious case.
- Stop counting "overnight". Count admission.
carefoundryESC evaluates reportability from the incident record, applies the deadline for the jurisdiction you record under, and shows the countdown from when you knew rather than from the injury. The evaluator is advisory with an audited override, because a judgment somebody is answerable for should not be made silently by software. See how jurisdiction compliance works.
Verify before you rely on this
Read the current text of 8 CCR §342 and Labor Code §6302 on the Department of Industrial Relations site. This article summarizes; it does not substitute.