Thomson Reuters Practical Law recently featured a Health Employment and Labor blog post, titled “Workplace Violence Prevention Plans Now Mandatory for California Hospitals and Skilled Nursing Facilities,” co-authored by Andrea K. Douglas, Senior Attorney, and Katrina J. Walasik, Associate, in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the firm’s Los Angeles office.
Following is an excerpt:
Effective April 1, 2018, California became the first state to require all acute-care hospitals and skilled-nursing facilities to develop and implement comprehensive workplace violence prevention plans. This mandate is intended to protect hospital employees from workplace violence caused by patients and/or family members.
Taking several years to develop, this statute was conceived by California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (“Cal OSHA”), in conjunction with professional nursing organizations such as California Nurses Association to address the high risk of workplace injuries faced by health care workers daily. Overall, health care workers suffer the greatest number of workplace injuries, with over 650,000 individuals injured each year. Violence in the health care industry, however, is historically underreported; one survey estimated that just 19% of all violent events are reported.
Under the new law, affected employers in the health care industry must prepare a workplace violence prevention plan…