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Health care workplace assault rates nearly double over a decade
Health care and social assistance assault rates rose to 11.9 per 10,000 full-time employees in 2023 to 2024, up from 9.8 in 2021 to 2022 and 6.4 in 2011.
Workplace violence has increased across most major industry sectors since 2011, with health care and social assistance remaining the epicenter, according to analysis from the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI). The rate of workplace assaults in the sector climbed to 11.9 per 10,000 full-time employees in 2023 to 2024, up from 9.8 in 2021 to 2022 and 6.4 in 2011.
NCCI also found that assaults accounted for a growing share of days away from work cases, reaching 9.6% in 2019 from 4.8% in 2011. The share fell temporarily to 3.4% in 2020, a change the organization attributed to a COVID-related illness surge that increased the denominator rather than fewer assaults, before returning to 9.8% by 2023 to 2024.
Within health care and social assistance, NCCI said violence by others was concentrated in a limited set of care environments. Hospitals and nursing and residential care facilities together accounted for 75.1% of violence-by-others cases in 2023 to 2024, including hospitals at 40.2% and nursing and residential care facilities at 34.9%.
While the most common settings by count included general medical and surgical hospitals, NCCI reported the highest assault rates occurred in behavioral-health and residential-care settings. Psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals posted a rate of 138.8 cases per 10,000 FTE workers, while residential intellectual and developmental disability, mental health, and substance abuse facilities posted a rate of 60.9, the report said.