Virginia Law

A. For the purposes of this section:

"Employee of the hospital" or "employee" means an employee of the outpatient hospital or a health care provider credentialed by the outpatient hospital or engaged by the hospital to perform health care services on the premises of the outpatient hospital.

"Workplace violence" means any act of violence or threat of violence, without regard to the intent of the perpetrator, that occurs against an employee of the hospital while on the premises of such hospital and engaged in the performance of his duties. "Workplace violence" includes (i) the threat or use of physical force against an employee that results in, or has a high likelihood of resulting in, injury, psychological trauma, or stress, regardless of whether physical injury is sustained, and (ii) any incident involving the threat of using dangerous weapons or using common objects as weapons or to cause physical harm, regardless of whether physical injury is sustained.

B. An outpatient hospital shall:

1. Establish a workplace violence incident reporting system, through which the outpatient hospital shall document, track, and analyze any incident of workplace violence reported.

2. Use the results of the analysis to make improvements in preventing workplace violence, including improvements achieved through continuing education in targeted areas, including (i) de-escalation training, (ii) risk identification, and (iii) violence prevention planning.

3. Clearly communicate the reporting system to all employees, including to any new employees at the employee orientation. The reporting system shall include guidelines on when and how to report incidents of workplace violence to the employer, security agencies, and appropriate law-enforcement authorities;

4. Record all reported incidents of workplace violence as voluntarily reported by an employee; and

5. Adopt a policy that prohibits any person from discriminating or retaliating against any employee of the outpatient hospital for reporting to, or seeking assistance or intervention from, the employer, security agencies, law-enforcement authorities, local emergency services organizations, government agencies, or others participating in any incident investigation. The policy shall comply with the provisions of § 40.1-27.3 of the Code of Virginia.

C. An outpatient hospital shall maintain the record of reported incidents of workplace violence made pursuant to subsection B of this section for at least two years and shall include in the record, at a minimum:

1. The date and time of the incident;

2. A description of the incident, including the job title of the affected employee;

3. Whether the perpetrator was a patient, visitor, employee, or other person;

4. A description of where the incident occurred;

5. 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);

6. 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 outpatient hospital policy; and

7. Information about the individual who completed the report, including the individual's name, job title, and the date of completion.

D. The outpatient hospital shall:

1. Report the data collected and reported pursuant to subsection C of this section to the chief medical officer and the chief nursing officer of the outpatient hospital on, at a minimum, a quarterly basis; and

2. Send a report to the Virginia Department of Health on an annual basis that includes, at a minimum, the number of incidents of workplace violence voluntarily reported by an employee pursuant to subsection B of this section. A report made to the Virginia Department of Health pursuant to this subsection shall be aggregated to remove any personally identifiable information.