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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2023 - 2024
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | February 22, 2024 01:17 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Chris Pielli |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Protecting Our Hospital Security Employees |
| Health care employees that work directly with patients often experience horrific instances of violence on the job, and tragically rates of violence against our health care workers have only gotten worse in recent years. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that health care workers account for almost 75% of all nonfatal workplace injuries, five times the rate of any other worker. The American College of Emergency Physicians reported that there was a 24% increase in assaults against emergency department staff between 2018 and 2022; 79% of emergency department staff reported being assaulted on the job in 2022, and 85% of physicians reported increased anxiety and emotional trauma from experiencing workplace violence. These workers often rely on hospital security staff to intervene in hostile situations, to de-escalate, and to remove them from harm’s way. Unfortunately, hospital security staff are often the victims of the same assaultive behavior. To address this continuing increase in violence, I will be introducing legislation that will add hospital security personnel to an existing law that makes it a felony of the first degree to assault law enforcement officers or force law enforcement officers to come into contact with bodily fluids. It is common sense to extend these protections that are currently afforded to law enforcement officers to the security personnel that we trust to protect our health care workers and hospitals. While Pennsylvania made great progress in 2020 by making it a felony offense to assault a health care worker and provided for better protection of health care workers’ identities by omitting last names from ID badges, we still have work to do. I look forward to you joining me in doing everything we can to remove violence from our health care system. |
Introduced as HB2170