What happened?

On March 27, 2025, Governor Glenn Youngkin signed House Bill (HB) 2269 into law, requiring hospitals to establish a workplace violence incident reporting system.

Overview:

The law aims to enhance the safety and well-being of healthcare workers by ensuring systematic reporting and analysis of workplace violence incidents, through comprehensive reporting and analysis.

Key Requirements

• Incident Reporting System:
  
  • Documentation: Hospitals must document, track, and analyze incidents of workplace violence.
  • Improvements: Use analysis results to improve violence prevention, including continuing education, de-escalation training, risk identification, and violence prevention planning.
  • Communication: During orientation, communicate the reporting system to all employees, including new hires.
  • Guidelines: Provide guidelines on when and how to report incidents to the employer, security agencies, and law enforcement.

• Incident Recording:
  
  • Voluntary Reporting: Record all incidents voluntarily reported by employees without investigating the accuracy before recording.
    
  • Record Maintenance: Maintain records for at least two years, including:
    
    • Date and time of the incident.
    • Description of the incident and affected employees’ job titles.
    • Perpetrator’s identity (patient, visitor, employee, or other).
    • Location of the incident.
    • Type of incident (physical attack, threat, sexual assault, etc.)
    • Response and consequences (security/law enforcement involvement, policy changes)
    • Reporter’s information (name, job title, date of completion)

• Reporting:
  
  • Quarterly Reports: Report data to the chief medical officer and chief nursing officer quarterly.
  • Annual Reports: Starting July 1, 2026, send annual reports to the Department of Health, including the number of incidents voluntarily reported.

• Regulations:
  
  • State Board of Health: Promulgate regulations for annual reporting to the Department of Health.

• Stakeholder Recommendations:
  
  • Work Group: Convene a work group to recommend data collection and reporting methods, additional entities subject to the system, and public data sharing.
  • Report Deadline: Recommendations due by November 1, 2025.

Source References

• VA HB2269 – Hospitals; reports of threats or acts of violence against health care providers.
• VA SB1260 – Hospitals; reports of threats or acts of violence against health care providers.

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