In committee
Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act
This bill requires healthcare and social service employers—such as hospitals, nursing facilities, emergency response units, and home health agencies—to create and enforce comprehensive workplace violence prevention plans with direct input from frontline staff. Covered facilities must implement physical safety measures like panic alarms and barriers, adjust staffing and procedures to manage high-risk situations, and provide annual safety training. Employers are also required to track all violent incidents, offer medical care and trauma counseling to affected workers, and protect staff from retaliation for reporting threats or contacting law enforcement.
People affected—not determinable from the text provided
Fiscal magnitude—no CBO estimate published
Reach72provisional · pending reviewrigor: heuristic llm
What this bill touches.
Workplace standards+62
Who it helps · who it burdens.
Who it helps
- Health care and social service workersGain enforceable workplace safety protections, active involvement in workplace violence prevention plans and incident investigations, mandatory training, access to incident logs, and explicit anti-retaliation protections when reporting violence or seeking emergency assistance (Sec. 101, Sec. 103).
Who it burdens
- Covered health care and social service employersMust develop, implement, and evaluate tailored written workplace violence prevention plans; investigate violent incidents; provide initial and annual employee training; maintain detailed violent incident logs for 5 years; and submit annual summaries to the Department of Labor (Sec. 101, Sec. 102, Sec. 103).
- Medicare-participating hospitals and skilled nursing facilities exempt from OSHAMust comply with the federal workplace violence prevention standard as a condition of Medicare participation, even if otherwise exempt from federal occupational safety and health laws (Sec. 201).
- Department of LaborRequired to issue an interim final standard within 1 year, propose a standard within 2 years, issue a final standard within 42 months, provide an electronic reporting platform and log templates, and submit an annual summary report to Congress (Sec. 101, Sec. 103(4)-(5)).