5 School Hotspots for Student Accidents

As a school administrator, you work hard to protect the children in your care. You’ve instituted many safeguards such as background checks, peanut-free zones, staff CPR and first aid training, anti-bullying, secured entrances, and more to protect them from almost every danger you can imagine. But you may be surprised to learn that the most common risk children face during their school day is from accidents — and they are not just those from school sports or sports-related activities as you would expect. An estimated 2.2 million children ages 14 and under sustain school-related injuries each year.

School accident claims can come from the most innocent or overlooked activities or locations. Do you know these top accident hot spots?

5 School Hot Spots for Student Accidents

When you consider these accident risks, it’s pretty clear that all parts of a school day, even carefully supervised and in controlled conditions, can be an accident waiting to happen.

1. Slips and falls: These can happen anywhere, any time. Being jostled in a crowded hallway or stairwell, slipping in some spilled milk in the cafeteria or ice on the playground, or even tripping over a cord in the classroom. These account for approximately 55% of school accidents.
2. Playgrounds: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 200,000 children age 14 and younger are treated for playground injuries every year. And while cuts, bruises, sprains, and broken limbs may happen, another concern is concussions sustained when falling from monkey bars, climbing equipment, and swings.
3. Burns, lacerations, and more: Chemical reactions and fires in science labs are not uncommon, nor is broken glass, for causing injuries. But don’t forget to include accidents that occur in the woodshop, kilns, or other activity areas.
4. School buses and school zones: Each year, about 17,000 children are treated in hospital emergency rooms for injuries associated with school buses. Injuries happen when riding the bus, during school bus crashes, getting on or off the bus, or standing near the bus.
5. Gym class: Not surprisingly, according to a recent study, more than 60,000 students are hurt each year during gym class. But as you can see, these types of school sports-related accidents are far from the only on the list.

Given the size of their student population and the fact that it holds kindergartners to seniors, schools can see any number of accidental injuries each day. And, any of these school accidents may need medical care, causing medical expenses for families.

While some families may be able to cover costs with personal health insurance, there may be families that don’t have coverage. They would have to pay the expenses out of their own funds. Or those who have coverage may not be able to cover co-payments and other out-of-pocket costs. This, in turn, could open up your school for legal action to pay the claims and damages. If this happened even once, it would be one time too many, as many would agree.

With all of these statistics and numbers, it may seem like the risk is out of control. Fortunately, student accident insurance can help. It’s easily available risk protection that’s simple to implement at your school. Today, over 675 K-12 school districts have turned to A-G Specialty Insurance for these types of coverages to help them with this exposure.

What A-G Student Accident Insurance Does

Quite simply, our student accident insurance plans help with the medical treatment costs not covered by personal health insurance. When a child is injured in an accident, our plans will help cover the out-of-pocket costs such as co-pays and deductibles left by their primary coverage. (In those instances where a family doesn’t have personal coverage, it helps them cover some of the bills.)

There are several different ways to offer the coverage that you can share with the school board:

• Mandatory plans, where parents pay the premiums, are excess plans that pay secondary to their primary health insurance
• Compulsory plans, where the school covers the premium
• Voluntary plans, which the parent has the option to purchase, and more

Regardless of which plan makes the most sense to your school’s situation, you can relax because your financial risk exposure due to accidents has decreased dramatically. You can also reassure the school board and your administration that you won’t add to their workload when you bring this student accident insurance coverage onboard because:

A-G handles the claims, so you don’t have to

EGBAR (Efficiency Generating Business Automation Resource) is our state-of-the-art claims technology that takes care of everything. We resolve claims fairly and equitably and leave no stone unturned when communicating with medical providers and our schools. There won’t be mountains of claims or miles of red tape for anyone in the school to deal with. It’s insurance the way it was meant to be: paying benefits.

Let us know if you’d like to talk to us about protecting your school’s accident hot spots or if you would like your agent or broker to contact us. Either way, we are always happy to talk about what we can do to help. By the way, we also offer K-12 school sports accident coverage, which you can read more about on the website.

Visit agspecialtyinsurance.com today for more information on how we can serve your school’s accident needs. Or start here to get a quote.