Sponsors (135)
Official title: To direct the Secretary of Labor to issue an occupational safety and health standard that requires covered employers within the health care and social service industries to develop and implement a comprehensive workplace violence prevention plan, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 1, 2025 by Joe Courtney · Last progress April 1, 2025
The bill strengthens worker and patient safety by requiring workplace-violence prevention, reporting, and HHS-enforceable remedies, but does so at significant compliance and administrative cost—especially for smaller or rural providers—and raises privacy and procedural transparency concerns.
Healthcare and social service workers will be required to have workplace violence prevention plans, training, and controls, improving on-the-job safety and reducing worker injuries.
Hospitals and nursing facilities will be subject to a federal baseline for violence-prevention, which creates enforceable HHS remedies and increases accountability where OSHA may not apply.
Patients may experience safer care environments as facilities adopt violence-reduction policies and staff training, potentially improving patient safety and continuity of care.
Hospitals, nursing facilities, and other covered employers will face substantial compliance costs (planning, engineering controls, training, recordkeeping, and reporting) that raise operating expenses.
Smaller, rural, and freestanding providers are likely to shoulder disproportionate financial and administrative burdens to comply, risking financial strain or curtailed services.
Facilities that fail to comply could face penalties or loss of Medicare participation, which can disrupt patient access to care, particularly for Medicare beneficiaries and those with chronic conditions.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Requires rapid OSHA-style workplace violence prevention standards for health and social service employers and makes compliance a Medicare condition of participation for hospitals and SNFs not covered by OSHA.
Requires the Labor Secretary to issue an interim final workplace violence prevention standard within one year that applies to employers in health care, social services, and similar settings, and to follow with a proposed and final standard on a defined timeline. The interim standard must be based on OSHA’s 2015 guidance, take effect quickly, include a compliance-assistance period, and be enforceable like an OSHA standard. It also makes compliance with that standard a Medicare/Medicaid condition of participation for hospitals and skilled nursing facilities not otherwise covered by OSHA, with those facilities required to comply beginning one year after issuance of the interim standard.