Substitute adopted to require hospital workplace‑violence reporting; bill passes subcommittee unanimously

A substitute for House Bill 2269, presented by Delegate Tran, would require hospitals in the Commonwealth to create a workplace violence incident reporting system to document, track and analyze incidents of workplace violence and to use those results to improve prevention.

The substitute requires hospitals to communicate the system to employees (including at orientation), to record voluntarily reported incidents and to retain records for at least two years. Required report elements include date and time, a description of the incident, the perpetrator category (patient, visitor, employee or other), location, response and outcomes, and information about the reporter. Hospitals must provide quarterly aggregated anonymous reports to the chief medical officer and chief nursing officer and submit aggregated incident totals to the Virginia Department of Health annually.

Support for the substitute was broad. Clark Baran of the Medical Society of Virginia told the subcommittee that “every provider group in the Commonwealth” supports the bill. Dr. Emery Newkirk, an emergency medicine physician, said workplace violence is frequent in emergency departments and emphasized the bill “is not intended to punish patients or their family members” but to create data needed for targeted solutions. Representatives of the Virginia Nurses Association, Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association, psychiatric and pediatric societies and nurse‑anesthetists also voiced support.

Brent Rawlings of the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association said hospitals had already been engaged on the issue and thanked the sponsor for working with stakeholders; he described the substitute as “a strong indication” of commitment to the problem.

The subcommittee adopted the substitute and reported the bill to the full committee. The clerk recorded the vote as 8–0 in favor of reporting the substitute.