Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. 

If your organization operates in California and is categorized as one of the following: 

1. Hospitals, including general acute care hospitals (GACH), acute psychiatric hospitals (APH), and specialty hospitals.
2. Long-Term Care, including skilled nursing facilities, intermediate care facilities, and hospice facilities.
3. Specialized Care, including correctional treatment centers, congregate living health facilities, and nursing facilities.
4. Community-Based Services, including home health care and home-based hospice.
5. Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and Medical Transport, including services provided by firefighters.
6. Treatment Programs, including drug treatment programs.
7. Correctional Healthcare, including outpatient medical services for incarcerated individuals in correctional/detention settings.

These deadlines have already passed, meaning all covered healthcare facilities (e.g., hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, correctional treatment centers) must currently be in full compliance.

You are at risk of paying significant compliance, legal, and punitive financial penalties. The average out-of-court settlement is $500,000, and jury trial settlements are often well over a million dollars.

Companies that do not comply may be liable for Cal/OSHA citations, legal responsibilities, and both compliance and punitive financial penalties. 

More importantly, an ineffective plan fails to protect employees, potentially resulting in preventable incidents, injuries, fatalities, decreased morale, increased turnover, and significant legal and financial liability.

NO. 

Workplace violence risks are highly specific to each hospital's unique combination of risk factors, like patient volume, community crime rates, and resource availability.

A generic template cannot adequately address your hospital's vulnerabilities or prescribe relevant, effective control measures, rendering it potentially ineffective and non-compliant in practice. The bill explicitly requires hospitals to conduct individualized risk assessments and develop plans based on their unique circumstances. 

A generic template would need significant modification to address factors like local crime data, staffing levels, and facility layout

The goal is for all healthcare organizations to implement comprehensive workplace violence prevention measures in high-risk healthcare settings, ensuring employers proactively address hazards through systematic planning, training, and incident accountability.

⚠️ Risks Addressed: The law targets high rates of physical assaults, threats, and psychological trauma against healthcare workers, occurring 5–12 times more frequently than in other industries, primarily from patients, visitors, or other perpetrators.

✅ Benefits Provided: By requiring hazard controls, employee training, and the logging of violent incidents, the law reduces injuries and psychological harm, thereby fostering safer environments for both healthcare workers and patients.

1. 🚨  Workplace Violence Prevention Plan (WVPP): Employers must develop a written, site-specific WVPP integrated into their Injury and Illness Prevention Program (IIPP). This plan must include procedures for hazard identification, employee involvement, coordination with other employers, law enforcement assistance, incident reporting, and compliance enforcement.
2. ⚠️ Hazard Identification & Evaluation: Regular assessments of environmental risks (e.g., poor lighting, isolated areas) and patient-specific factors (e.g., history of violence, mental health conditions) are required. Inspections must occur upon plan implementation, after incidents, and when new hazards emerge.
3. ✅ Employee Training: Initial and annual training must cover recognizing violence risks, de-escalation strategies, emergency procedures, and the WVPP. Training must involve employees in curriculum design and be tailored to literacy and language needs.
4. 📋 Violent Incident Log: Employers must maintain a detailed log of all workplace violence incidents, including the date, description, type of perpetrator (e.g., patient, visitor), and outcome. Personal identifiers must be excluded, and logs kept for 5 years.
5. 🛡️ Reporting to Cal/OSHA (Hospitals Only): General acute, acute psychiatric, and special hospitals must report serious incidents (e.g., physical force causing injury or psychological trauma) to Cal/OSHA within 24 hours.
6. 💡 Post-Incident Response & Plan Review: Procedures for debriefing affected employees, providing medical care, and investigating incidents are mandated. The WVPP must be reviewed annually, after incidents, or when deficiencies are identified.
7. 🔐 Engineering/Work Practice Controls: Implementation of physical safeguards (e.g., alarm systems, secure workstations) and administrative measures (e.g., staffing adjustments, "buddy systems") to mitigate risks.

We provide hospital executives with confidence and peace of mind, so they can focus on their main priority and mission: Delivering High Quality Patient Care.   

Our team of industry experts is comprised of Police Officers, Court Expert Witnesses, Military Police, Regulatory Compliance Auditors, and Board Advisors. Priding ourselves on delivering the highest quality reports that meet, if not exceed, your regulatory standards, by objectively identifying, evaluating, and ranking the risks and specific workplace violence hazards unique to your hospital(s). 

Our professionals are trained to recognize subtle environmental, operational, and behavioral indicators of potential violence across diverse industries, ensuring a comprehensive assessment that fully complies with your regulatory requirements for thoroughness and goes beyond obvious threats. 

We provide: 

• An Unbiased Perspective: Identifying risks without internal assumptions or biases.
• Regulatory Understanding: Deep industry knowledge and understanding of regulatory agencies' expectations and interpretation of 3342's requirements.
• Proven Methodologies: Structured approaches to hazard identification, assessment, and control prioritization honed through experience.
• Cross-Industry Insights: Applying effective prevention strategies learned from various sectors to your unique situation.
• Speed & Efficiency: Conducting the assessment systematically and often more quickly than an untrained internal team.