Fact Sheet & Highlights: An Act Requiring Health Care Employers to Develop and Implement Programs to Prevent Workplace Violence S.3171

An Act requiring health care employers to develop and implement programs to prevent workplace violence supports frontline health care workers and addresses violence in health care settings by focusing on security at medical facilities.

Nearly seven out of 10 nurses in Massachusetts now report having experienced an assault in the workplace, according to the Massachusetts Nurses Association.

The legislation ensures hospitals and other health care facilities have plans to prevent and respond to incidents of workplace violence. It also extends new supports to health care workers and emergency medical services (EMS) staff and ensures that critical incident data is collected and published.

The details of the legislation are below.

Requires Annual Security Checks. Requires health care employers to annually review and update risk assessments and workplace violence prevention programs to reduce the risk to employees at their facilities. As part of this review, a hospital or other facility may evaluate its security systems, late-night and early-morning protocols, and public access points. It would be incumbent upon a health care employer to determine the best ways to mitigate risks for each facility through plans such as employee training, monitoring, equipment, staffing, or timely response to incidents.

Allows Warrantless Arrests for Health Care Facility Assaults. Improves law enforcement officers’ ability to make a prompt arrest for line-of-duty assault and battery on a health care facility employee. Creates a reasonable exception, similar to exceptions currently on the books for domestic violence assault and battery, allowing warrantless arrests in situations where the officer has probable cause to believe the suspect committed the assault.

Boosts Protections for Providers and EMS Personnel. Ensures that health care providers, emergency medical technicians, ambulance operators, and ambulance attendants are protected during all work hours. Currently, the criminal offense for assault or assault and battery on any of those workers applies only when these workers are treating or transporting a person. The legislation ensures the offense applies at any point while in the line of duty.

Covers Time Off Resulting from an Assault. Supports health care employees who are assaulted in the workplace by requiring their employer to offer paid leave that covers their time seeking medical treatment for injuries or aiding in the prosecution of their attacker. This ensures that a health care employee can testify before a jury or obtain medical treatment for their line-of-duty injury without losing any of their personal time, sick time, or vacation time to a violent assault.

Shields Victims’ Private Information. Protects the privacy of health care, EMS, and ambulance employees who are assaulted on the job by allowing them to apply for a criminal complaint without exposing their personal residential address. The employee would be able to instead list the address of their health care facility or labor union.

Tracks and Publishes Violent Incident Statistics. Requires health care employers to annually report all workplace violence incidents to the Department of Public Health (DPH) and the district attorney for the county where the health care facility is located. Requires DPH to aggregate and publish statewide and county-level data categorized by occupation and incident type.

Promotes Data Sharing. Requires the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS), in consultation with the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS), to report on ways to improve interagency data sharing, communication, and collaboration between health care facilities to address alternative appropriate placement for criminal justice-involved patients with a mental health or behavioral health diagnosis.

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