Sponsors (111)
The bill increases safety for healthcare workers and patients through mandatory violence-prevention measures and stronger enforcement, but does so at the cost of substantial compliance expenses and potential financial strain or service disruptions for smaller and rural providers, along with some privacy and procedural trade-offs.
Healthcare and social-service employees nationwide will be required to have workplace violence prevention plans, training, and engineering controls, reducing on-the-job injuries and improving worker safety.
Patients in hospitals, nursing facilities, and other covered sites are likely to experience safer care environments and better post-incident care, since facilities must adopt violence-reduction policies and provide medical care and trauma counseling to victims.
The bill increases accountability by requiring incident recording/reporting and creating enforceable HHS remedies for noncompliant hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, improving transparency and enforcement where OSHA may not apply.
Hospitals, nursing facilities, and other covered employers will face substantial new compliance costs (planning, engineering controls, training, recordkeeping, reporting), raising operating expenses.
Smaller, freestanding, and rural providers may face disproportionate financial and logistical burdens from required engineering controls and compliance timelines, risking service reductions or closures in underserved areas.
Noncompliant facilities could face penalties or loss of Medicare participation under HHS remedies, potentially disrupting patient access to care, especially for Medicare beneficiaries.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Requires federal workplace violence prevention standards for health care and social service workplaces and makes non‑OSHA hospitals and nursing homes comply as a Medicare condition.
Introduced April 1, 2025 by Joe Courtney · Last progress April 1, 2025
Requires the Secretary of Labor to issue an interim final workplace violence prevention standard for health care, social service, and similar workplaces within set deadlines, and to follow with a proposed and final standard. The rule must require covered employers to create and implement comprehensive workplace violence prevention plans, training, engineering and administrative controls, and other protections; the interim standard takes effect quickly and includes a short compliance-assistance period. Makes hospitals and skilled nursing facilities that are not already covered by OSHA or an approved State plan subject to the new workplace violence prevention standard by adding it as a Medicare condition of participation, with those facilities required to comply beginning one year after the interim standard is issued.