Status: In Effect — National Performance Goal 2a (NPG 2a), Preventing Workplace Violence, became effective for Joint Commission-accredited hospitals, critical access hospitals, assisted living communities, nursing care centers, and office-based surgery practices on January 1, 2026. Behavioral health care and human services organizations have been subject to parallel workplace-violence prevention requirements since July 1, 2024. The original 2022 framework was revised and elevated as part of The Joint Commission’s broader transition from National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) to year-round National Performance Goals (NPGs).

Standard Citation: The Joint Commission — National Performance Goal 2a (NPG 2a), “Preventing Workplace Violence”

Jurisdiction: Federal-equivalent (private accreditation; CMS-deemed status in most cases)

Category: Healthcare Workplace Violence, Hospital Accreditation

Industries: Healthcare (hospitals, critical access hospitals, ambulatory care, behavioral health and human services, assisted living, nursing care centers, office-based surgery)

Effective Date: July 1, 2022 (original hospital workplace violence prevention standards); July 1, 2024 (behavioral health care and human services); July 1, 2025 (revised hospital, assisted living, nursing care, office-based surgery requirements); January 1, 2026 (formal elevation to NPG 2a status).

Summary: The Joint Commission’s workplace violence prevention requirements are not a statute; they are accreditation standards that function as binding obligations for the thousands of U.S. healthcare organizations that maintain Joint Commission accreditation, including most hospitals that participate in Medicare and Medicaid through CMS-deemed status. With the January 2026 release, the Joint Commission consolidated its prior workplace violence prevention standards into National Performance Goal 2a, signaling that workplace violence prevention is now treated as a high-priority national safety goal alongside patient identification, infection control, and medication safety.

NPG 2a defines workplace violence as “an act or threat occurring at the workplace that can include any of the following: verbal, nonverbal, written, or physical aggression; threatening, intimidating, harassing, or humiliating words or actions; bullying; sabotage; sexual harassment; physical assaults; or other behaviors of concern involving staff, licensed practitioners, patients, or visitors.” This is a broader definition than most state statutes use, encompassing both physical and non-physical aggression.

Key Requirements:

Designated Leadership and Multidisciplinary Team: Accredited organizations must designate leadership for workplace violence prevention and operate a multidisciplinary team to oversee the program.
Written Workplace Violence Prevention Program: Organizations must establish and document a written program covering hazard identification, prevention strategies, response, post-incident review, and continuous improvement.
Worksite Analysis: Processes for analyzing worksites to identify potential risks of workplace violence and the controls that mitigate them.
Policies and Procedures: Comprehensive policies covering reporting, response, de-escalation, security personnel coordination, and post-incident support.
Training: Documented workplace violence prevention training delivered at hire, annually, and whenever the program changes.
Incident Reporting and Investigation: Systems for reporting all workplace violence incidents (including verbal, nonverbal, written, and physical), with structured incident investigation and follow-up.
Continuous Improvement: Annual review of program effectiveness and modification based on incident data, near-miss analysis, and emerging hazards.

Enforcement: Joint Commission surveyors evaluate compliance during scheduled accreditation surveys. Since the original workplace violence prevention standards took effect in January 2022, The Joint Commission has cited hospitals on more than one hundred Requirements for Improvement (RFIs) for workplace violence-related findings, with required correction within 60 days. Loss of Joint Commission accreditation can jeopardize CMS deemed status and Medicare/Medicaid participation.

Affected Entities: All Joint Commission-accredited hospitals, critical access hospitals, assisted living communities, nursing care centers, office-based surgery practices, behavioral health care organizations, and human services organizations. The standards effectively apply to the majority of U.S. hospitals because of the prevalence of Joint Commission accreditation and CMS deemed status.

Relationship to State Laws and OSHA: NPG 2a is layered on top of any state-level workplace violence prevention statutes (California SB 553, Oregon SB 537, Texas SB 240, Vermont Act 9, New York S5294-B, Massachusetts H.4767, etc.) and OSHA General Duty Clause enforcement. Hospitals subject to multiple frameworks generally build a single integrated workplace violence prevention program that satisfies the strictest applicable requirement on each element. NPG 2a’s broader workplace-violence definition (which includes verbal aggression, harassment, and bullying) often sets the highest documentation bar, while state laws frequently set the highest training-frequency and security-personnel bars.

IntelliSee Relevance: High. NPG 2a’s requirements for hazard identification, controls, incident reporting, and continuous improvement map directly to engineering-control technology that produces verifiable, time-stamped data. IntelliSee’s AI-powered continuous monitoring supports each pillar of the standard:

Worksite analysis & hazard identification: AI weapon detection, fall detection, and unauthorized-access detection across emergency departments, behavioral health units, lobbies, parking areas, and back-of-house corridors generate the data hospitals need to inform their worksite analyses.
Engineering controls: Continuous AI monitoring provides a 24/7 control that supplements human security and addresses the documented Joint Commission concern that staff cannot reliably observe live video for sustained periods.
Incident reporting and investigation: Detections produce timestamped, location-tagged records that support the standard’s incident-investigation requirement and facilitate the follow-up required within Joint Commission’s 60-day RFI cure window.
Privacy compatibility: The platform operates without facial recognition, remaining compatible with HIPAA, patient confidentiality, and CMS Conditions of Participation.

The Joint Commission Workplace Violence Prevention Requirements (NPG 2a)

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