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. A 2022 report from the American College of Emergency Physicians found that 79% of emergency department staff reported being assaulted on the job, 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, all too often becoming the victims of the same assaults.
 
To address the continuing increase in violence, we will be introducing legislation that will extend existing protections for law enforcement officers to hospital security personnel, making it a felony of the first degree to assault them or force them 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.