Oregon OSHA Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care Rule (OAR 437-002-0150, 2026)

Status: Proposed — Rulemaking In Progress. Proposal published July 21, 2026. Public comment closed at 5 p.m. on August 31, 2026. Tentative adoption in October 2026.

Rule Number: OAR 437-002-0150, Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care (Oregon OSHA). Implements Oregon Senate Bill 537 (2025).

Jurisdiction: Oregon

Category: Healthcare Workplace Violence Prevention

Industries: Hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, home health agencies, home hospice programs

Enacted Date: Pending. Underlying statute (SB 537) adopted by the 2025 Oregon Legislature and signed by Governor Tina Kotek.

Effective Date: January 2027, per Oregon OSHA's published timeline.

Summary: Oregon OSHA has proposed a new standard, OAR 437-002-0150, that converts Senate Bill 537 into enforceable workplace violence prevention requirements for health care employers. SB 537 did two things the rule now operationalizes. First, it widened who is covered: home health agencies and home hospice providers join the hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers already subject to Oregon's requirements. Second, it widened what counts: the statute replaced the narrower term “assaults” with “workplace violence,” defined as any act or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, assault, homicide, or other threatening behavior occurring in the workplace. Oregon OSHA estimates the proposed rule would reach roughly 62 hospitals, 91 ambulatory surgical centers, 65 home health agencies, and 74 home hospice programs. The proposal also amends two existing standards to align with the new rule: OAR 437-001-0295 (Discrimination Complaint) and OAR 437-001-0706, which is renamed from Recordkeeping for Healthcare Assaults to Recordkeeping for Health Care Workplace Violence.

Key Provisions:

• Periodic Security and Safety Assessments: Covered employers must conduct periodic assessments to identify existing threats of workplace violence.
• Written Prevention Program: Employers must develop and implement a workplace violence prevention and protection program built on the findings of those assessments.
• Annual Training: Workplace violence prevention and protection training must be provided every year.
• Safety Committee Consultation: Employers must consult their safety committee — or, where allowed, employees during safety meetings — on procedures to investigate, collect, and report workplace violence incidents.
• Expanded Recordkeeping: OAR 437-001-0706 is renamed and rescoped from assaults to the broader workplace violence definition.
• Expanded Coverage: Home health agencies and home hospice programs are pulled into scope for the first time.

Affected Entities: Oregon hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, licensed home health agencies, and home hospice programs.

IntelliSee Relevance: High for facility-based providers. The proposed rule is assessment-driven: the prevention program an employer must build has to follow from a documented security and safety assessment of existing threats. That structure rewards providers who can show what their physical environment actually exposes and what coverage they have against it. For hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers, IntelliSee's healthcare deployment layers weapon detection, unauthorized access, loitering, crowd formation, and fall detection onto cameras a facility already owns, producing both a continuous detection layer and an incident record that feeds the recordkeeping obligation under the revised OAR 437-001-0706. It is worth being precise about scope: Oregon's definition of workplace violence includes harassment and intimidation, categories that computer vision does not address. IntelliSee covers the physical-threat portion of the assessment, not the behavioral and reporting program as a whole. Employers with no-cost facility risk assessments in hand enter the rulemaking's compliance window with the documentation step already done. Request a healthcare risk assessment.

Related Legislation & Resources

• Oregon Healthcare Workplace Violence Prevention (SB 537)
• Federal OSHA Workplace Violence Prevention Standard (Rulemaking)
• California Workplace Violence Prevention (SB 553)
• U.S. Workplace Violence Statistics
• Healthcare Safety Solutions

Sources: Oregon OSHA — Rule proposed to improve protections against workplace violence in health care (July 21, 2026) | Oregon OSHA — Notice of proposed rulemaking (PDF) | Oregon Legislature — SB 537 (2025)