SIGNALING A POTENTIAL breakthrough on a bill that has bottomed out on Beacon Hill for over a decade, the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday advanced legislation addressing the growing problem of violence in health care workplaces, setting up a Wednesday floor vote.
The bill (H 4767) represents the collaborative work of the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association, Mass. Nurses Association and the state division of 1199SEIU. It would require health care employers to adopt comprehensive violence-prevention systems and create new criminal and privacy protections for workers.
It cleared the Ways and Means Committee by a vote of 31-0, a margin that signals the bill is likely on track to advance to the Senate.
According to a bill summary, someone in a Massachusetts health care facility is assaulted, threatened or verbally abused every 38 minutes.
Under the bill, all health care employers must conduct annual, facility-specific risk assessments in collaboration with employees and labor representatives. They must also implement written violence-prevention plans that include mitigation strategies, employee training, incident debriefings and crisis-response programs.
For the first time, employers would be required to report all incidents of workplace violence annually to the Department of Public Health and to regional district attorneys, with the data published publicly by occupation and type of incident. Noncompliant employers could face civil penalties of up to $2,000 per violation, and workers would be shielded from retaliation.
The bill also creates new criminal penalties for assaulting health care workers. Assault causing bodily injury could carry up to five years in prison, while assault causing serious bodily injury could carry up to ten years.
The bill is on the move at a time when the Legislature also appears to finalizing legislation meant to enhance workplace protections for public transit workers (S 2697). That bill extends assault and battery protections against public workers to also include workers at the MBTA, commuter rail and regional public transit authorities, with penalties of between 90 days and 2.5 years in a house of correction of a $500 to $5,000 fine.
The coalition behind the health care legislation testified in April that intentional assault and battery is treated as a misdemeanor, a misalignment they said fails to reflect the severity or frequency of the violence.
“What happens every 36 minutes in a Massachusetts hospital?” said MHA President and CEO Steve Walsh during the bill’s hearing. “It isn’t a lifesaving procedure. It isn’t the beginning of a new career. It isn’t a lifesaving technology or therapy. It’s the assault of one of our workers every 36 minutes.”
A component of the House Ways and Means version is a new paid leave guarantee for health care workers directly employed by a facility who suffer bodily injury on the job due to workplace violence. They would be entitled to paid leave without being required to use sick, vacation, or personal time — a provision advocates said is critical to ensuring workers can recover or handle court proceedings without financial penalty.
This is an expansion from the bill that went to Ways and Means, which allowed health care employees to take seven days leave in any 12-month period following a violent incident.
The bill also includes privacy protections, allowing victims who are hospital employees or union members to list their facility or union address on court documents instead of their home address.
Additional provisions mandate a statewide report from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services and the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security on alternatives to criminal justice involvement for high-acuity behavioral health patients, along with recommendations for non-arrest pathways that preserve confidentiality.
Lawmakers signaled in April that they were aware of the need to balance worker protection with concerns about criminalizing patients in crisis.
Sen. John Cronin noted that the bill requires that a perpetrator “knowingly and intentionally” commit assault to face the higher penalty charges, calling it “really clear, and [demonstrating] that appropriate balance.”
Walsh told the committee the coalition worked to ensure the bill protected workers without punishing individuals unable to form intent.
The sense of urgency around health care workplace violence has grown in recent years. A May Beacon Research poll of 505 registered nurses found that nearly seven in 10 described workplace violence and abuse as a serious problem — five points higher than last year and 27 points above March 2021.
For many advocates, Wednesday’s expected vote represents the closest the Legislature has come to enacting protections they have sought for years. Bills aimed at cracking down on escalating assaults on health care workers have languished in the Legislature for 16 years.
During testimony in April, Dr. Joseph Kopp, an emergency physician at Faulkner and Brigham and Women’s hospitals, urged lawmakers not only to advance the bill but to push leadership to bring it to the floor.
“Please, I’m asking for you to be our champions,” he said.
With the bill now slated for debate, lawmakers are on the verge of deciding whether the rare alignment among labor, nurses and hospital executives is enough to carry the measure across the finish line in the House.