Sponsors (114)
Introduced April 1, 2025 by Joe Courtney · Last progress April 1, 2025
The bill strengthens workplace-violence protections, support, and enforcement for healthcare and social service workers and improves transparency, but does so by imposing new compliance and reporting costs (especially on smaller/rural providers), raising privacy concerns and creating risks of service disruption if facilities cannot meet the requirements.
Healthcare and social service workers (including hospital and nursing facility staff) will face fewer on-the-job violence risks because covered facilities must adopt prevention plans, engineering controls, and training.
Victimized employees will receive medical care and access to trauma counseling and will be protected from retaliation for reporting or seeking assistance, improving victim support and workplace rights.
Patients and the public benefit from greater transparency and accountability because employers must record/report incidents annually and HHS gains enforceable remedies for noncompliant hospitals and skilled nursing facilities where OSHA may not apply.
Hospitals, nursing facilities, and other covered employers will face substantial new compliance costs (planning, training, engineering controls, recordkeeping, reporting), raising operating expenses.
Smaller, rural, or freestanding providers are disproportionately affected and may struggle with costs and timelines for required changes, risking financial strain or reduced local services.
Facilities that fail to comply could face penalties or loss of Medicare participation, which may disrupt patient access to care—particularly for Medicare beneficiaries.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Creates an OSHA-enforceable workplace violence prevention standard for health care and social service employers and ties hospital/skilled nursing compliance to Medicare participation.
Requires employers in health care, social services, and similar settings to adopt enforceable workplace violence prevention standards. The Secretary of Labor must issue an interim final standard within 1 year based on OSHA’s 2015 guidelines, make it effective quickly, provide limited technical-assistance and a compliance-assistance period, and complete a proposed and final rule on a set timetable. Hospitals and skilled nursing facilities that are not covered by OSHA must comply with the new standard as a Medicare condition of participation, with that requirement starting one year after the interim standard is issued.