Sponsors (32)
Official title: 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 Tammy Baldwin · Last progress April 1, 2025
The bill increases safety for healthcare and social-service workers (and patients) through mandatory prevention plans, training, counseling, and strong Medicare-based enforcement, but does so at the cost of substantial compliance and administrative burdens—especially for small and rural providers—and with reduced procedural review and some privacy risks.
Healthcare and social-service workers (and the patients they care for) will be protected by facility-specific workplace violence prevention plans and federal protections, reducing risk of assault and improving workplace and patient safety.
Hospitals and skilled nursing facilities will face a Medicare participation tie that strongly encourages rapid adoption of prevention measures, increasing the likelihood of broad, fast compliance.
Covered employees will have access to trauma counseling and medical care after violent incidents, helping recovery and reducing long-term harm.
Hospitals and SNFs (and ultimately patients) will face substantial compliance costs for engineering controls, security, training, recordkeeping, and reporting that could raise operating costs or reduce resources available for care.
Smaller and rural providers, and entities not previously under OSHA, may struggle with administrative burdens and upfront costs, risking reduced service availability or difficulty meeting requirements.
Facilities that cannot comply within the roughly one-year effective period tied to Medicare participation risk losing Medicare reimbursement, threatening revenue and patient access in affected communities.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Requires Labor to issue an interim then final workplace violence prevention standard for health care and social service employers and makes compliance a Medicare condition for certain hospitals and SNFs.
Requires the Labor Department to issue an interim final workplace violence prevention standard within 1 year for employers in health care, social services, and related settings, based at minimum on OSHA’s 2015 guidance, with a compliance assistance period and a 30-day public comment window. The interim standard must take effect quickly and remain until a final standard is issued; a proposed final standard must be published within 2 years and a final standard issued thereafter. The bill also makes compliance with the workplace violence standard a Medicare condition of participation for certain hospitals and skilled nursing facilities not otherwise covered by OSHA, with that requirement effective one year after the interim standard is issued.