Senate Health & Welfare reviews law requiring hospital workplace‑violence plans and reporting

The Senate Health & Welfare committee reviewed Act 9 (H259), which Speaker 2 said “requires hospitals to implement security plans for preventing workplace violence” and to use a workplace‑violence incident reporting system “to document, track, and analyze” incidents and emerging patterns.

Speaker 2 described several requirements in the act: hospitals must perform security risk assessments; develop and implement security plans based on those assessments; maintain an incident reporting and data system for workplace violence; and include costs to implement the security plan as part of the hospital budget review so the Green Mountain Care Review Board can account for implementation expenses when establishing hospital budgets. Speaker 1 characterized the measure as a continuation of earlier work prompted by “awful events in our emergency department.”

Committee members suggested following up with hospital representatives to get an update on implementation. Speaker 1 said, “We probably should get an update from hospitals at some time,” and Speaker 4 agreed that would be useful. The committee did not take formal action during this meeting on any implementation timelines.

Next steps: committee members indicated they want a future briefing from hospitals and may seek evaluation data on incident reporting and cost impacts as the statutory implementation proceeds.