Virginia has passed a new law requiring hospitals in the Commonwealth to establish a workplace violence incident reporting system to document, track, and analyze any incident of workplace violence reported.
The bill requires each hospital to (i) report the data collected via the reporting system to the chief medical officer and the chief nursing officer of such hospital on, at minimum, a quarterly basis and (ii) send a report to the Department of Health on an annual basis that includes, at a minimum, the number of incidents of workplace violence voluntarily reported by an employee.
Hospitals must maintain the record of reported incidents of workplace violence for at least two years and must include in such record, at a minimum:
- The date and time of the incident;
- A description of the incident, including the job titles of the affected employee;
- Whether the perpetrator was a patient, visitor, employee, or other person;
- A description of where the incident occurred;
- Information relating the type of incident, including whether the incident involved (i) a physical attack without a weapon; (ii) an attack with a weapon or object; (iii) a threat of physical force or use of a weapon or other object with the intent to cause bodily harm; (iv) sexual assault or the threat of sexual assault; or (v) anything else not listed in subdivisions (i) through (iv);
- The response to and any consequences of the incident, including (i) whether security or law enforcement was contacted and, if so, their response and (ii) whether the incident resulted in any change to hospital policy; and
- Information about the individual who completed the report, including such individual’s name, job title, and the date of completion.
The requirements are effective July 1, 2025. You can find the enacting bill here.
