RELATING TO WORKPLACE VIOLENCE IN HEALTH CARE SETTINGS.
HB2562 would create a new part in chapter 323, Hawaii Revised Statutes, establishing statewide workplace-violence prevention requirements for health care facilities. The bill defines workplace violence broadly to include physical, verbal, sexual, written, and electronic threats, as well as conduct likely to cause fear or emotional disturbance. It requires facilities to adopt and enforce zero-tolerance policies, maintain a workplace violence prevention program, create written response procedures, provide staff and leadership training, conduct periodic worksite risk analyses, and document and report incidents.
The measure also gives health care workers specific protections and rights. Workers could accept, reject, or object in writing to patient assignments that pose serious risk, and they would be protected from retaliation for reporting workplace violence or exercising those assignment rights. Facilities would have to investigate incidents promptly, assess ongoing risk, provide support services, and take protective measures after reports are made. For larger acute care, specialty care, and long-term care facilities, the bill would require access-control and security-screening measures such as staffed checkpoints, metal detectors or wands, and restricted access to nonpublic areas, while ensuring emergency care, disability access, and fire/life safety requirements are not compromised.
HB2562 would add a new regulatory framework to chapter 323 and impose affirmative duties on health care facilities statewide, with enforcement assigned to the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations in coordination with the Department of Health. It would affect hospitals, specialty care facilities, long-term care facilities, and other licensed health care facilities, with the most detailed security-screening requirements applying only above specified bed thresholds. The bill also creates potential administrative penalties, corrective action plans, daily fines, and treble damages-style make-whole remedies for workers harmed by retaliation or injury while a facility is out of compliance, and it requires facilities to transmit procedures to DLIR and to bargain over certain changes where a collective bargaining agreement applies.
The bill’s stated purpose and structure reflect strong support for protecting health care workers and reducing workplace violence through mandatory facility-level policies and enforcement. The available context shows no recorded votes or committee testimony, but the committee status indicates the House Health Committee recommended deferral, suggesting the measure did not advance at that stage. Overall, the bill appears to have been framed as a worker-safety and patient-safety measure, with an emphasis on proactive prevention rather than relying only on criminal penalties after assaults occur.
The main points of potential contention are the bill’s operational and labor implications. Health care facilities may object to the cost and staffing burden of security checkpoints, screening equipment, training, reporting systems, and ongoing risk analyses, especially for larger facilities. Labor-related issues may also arise because the bill requires procedures to be included in handbooks and training, limits unilateral changes that reduce protections, and makes certain procedure changes subject to collective bargaining. In addition, the assignment-rights provision, anti-retaliation language, and treble-losses remedy could be viewed as expanding worker protections and facility liability beyond existing law.