Sponsors (108)
Introduced April 1, 2025 by Joe Courtney · Last progress April 1, 2025
The bill substantially expands workplace-violence prevention protections and data collection across healthcare and social-service settings—improving safety for workers and patients—but imposes new compliance, privacy, and timing burdens on providers (especially small and rural facilities) and accelerates rulemaking that may prompt legal and implementation challenges.
Healthcare and social-service workers (including staff in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and covered social service settings) will gain mandated, comprehensive workplace-violence prevention plans, required training, and anti-retaliation protections, improving on-the-job safety and ability to report incidents without fear of discipline.
Patients in hospitals and nursing facilities will experience safer care environments as more facilities implement standardized violence-prevention policies and training.
Covered employers (hospitals, health systems, and other covered facilities) will be required to keep incident logs and submit annual reports, creating national data that can inform policy, resource allocation, and future prevention efforts.
Hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and other covered employers (including small and rural providers) will face new compliance costs for plans, engineering controls, training, staffing, and recordkeeping that could raise operating expenses and strain budgets.
Hospitals and facilities that fail to meet the new standard risk penalties or termination of participation in federal healthcare programs, which could disrupt facility finances and patient access to care.
Smaller or rural facilities may struggle with the one-year implementation timeline, creating uneven readiness, potential service gaps, and increased burden on underserved communities.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Directs OSHA to issue interim and final workplace-violence prevention standards for health care and social service workplaces and makes compliance a Medicare condition for certain hospitals and SNFs.
Requires the Secretary of Labor to issue an interim final workplace violence prevention standard within one year for employers in health care, social services, and similar settings, and to issue a proposed final standard within two years. The standard must require comprehensive workplace violence prevention plans based at minimum on OSHA’s 2015 Guidelines, take effect quickly, and include a prioritized period for technical assistance. Makes compliance with the workplace violence prevention standard a Medicare condition of participation for certain hospitals and skilled nursing facilities that would otherwise be outside OSHA coverage, with that requirement taking effect one year after issuance of the interim standard. The measure removes several usual procedural hurdles to issuing the interim standard while preserving short public notice and comment and sets enforcement and timing rules for interim and final standards.