Portland, Oregon — Healthcare workers account for just 10% of the American workforce. But they absorb nearly half of all non-fatal workplace violence injuries — 48%, according to a 2024 CDC study. And Congress, despite growing urgency, remains at a standstill over how to fix it.
Two competing bills are circulating in Washington, each backed by major industry groups, each reflecting a fundamentally different theory of the problem.
Two bills, two visions
The Workplace Violence Prevention Act would require healthcare employers — including nursing homes — to develop and implement comprehensive workplace violence prevention plans. Advocates say the root cause isn’t just bad actors. It’s staffing.
“Safe staffing makes everyone safer,” said Jane Thomason of National Nurses United. “If you don’t have time to be in your patient’s room and you’re rushing between patients, you’re not gonna be able to recognize those signs of escalation and intervene with that patient as early as if you were safely staffed.”
The competing bill takes a different approach. The Save Healthcare Workers Act, backed by the American Hospital Association, focuses on toughening criminal penalties for people who assault healthcare staff. Claire Zangerle, the AHA’s chief nurse executive, argues deterrence is the real answer.
“It’s very much like having a police force in the hospital walking the beat,” Zangerle said. “That presence deters the crime.”
Congress has yet to act on either proposal.
Oregon leads the way
With federal action stalled, Oregon became the first state to enact sweeping healthcare violence prevention legislation in January 2026. The law requires hospitals to create workplace safety committees, set up mandatory incident reporting, allow nurses to use only their first name on their badge to prevent doxing, and install bulletproof glass in emergency rooms.
For home health nurses — workers who enter strangers’ homes alone — it fills a long-standing gap. Under the new rules, violent patient histories must be shared between healthcare organizations, so a home health nurse isn’t walking in blind.
“I was sitting about five feet from a back door, and I just jumped up and ran out,” said Julianna Harder, an Oregon home health nurse with 30 years of experience. “As soon as I got to my car, I literally broke down crying.”
What this means for nursing homes
Long-term care workers face a specific kind of exposure. Residents with dementia, cognitive impairment, or psychiatric conditions can become aggressive — and the same understaffing problems that compromise care quality also make it harder to spot or prevent escalation. The debate in Congress has direct implications for how nursing homes protect their staff and what accountability looks like when they don’t.
The staffing question connects directly to wider policy battles in the sector. House Democrats recently introduced a new nursing home staffing bill that industry groups say goes too far — a tension that may intensify as the violence data keeps mounting.
Both workers and advocates say the most important shift is cultural: the industry has normalized violence for too long.
“Getting slapped, pinched, spit on, sexually groped — people are like, ‘that just happens,'” one nurse said. It shouldn’t.
