Status: Enacted — Act 9 of 2025

Bill Number: VT H.259 (Act 9)

Jurisdiction: Vermont

Category: Healthcare Workplace Violence, Hospital Security

Industries: Healthcare

Enacted Date: May 2025 (Governor Phil Scott)

Effective Date: July 1, 2025

Summary: Vermont H.259, codified as Act 9 of 2025, establishes a comprehensive hospital workplace violence prevention framework for every Vermont licensed hospital. The act requires each hospital to form a security plan development team, conduct a hazard assessment of all high-risk areas, develop and annually review a written workplace violence security plan, maintain a workplace violence incident reporting system that tracks and analyzes incidents, and distribute the plan to all hospital employees, volunteers, board members, and relevant law enforcement and partner agencies. The act was signed by Governor Phil Scott in May 2025 and took effect on July 1, 2025.

Key Requirements:

Security Plan Development Team: Must include hospital employees who provide direct patient care, representatives from the designated agency in the region where the hospital is located, and representatives of relevant law enforcement agencies.
Hazard Assessment: Each hospital must assess all high-risk areas as the basis for its security plan.
Written Security Plan Elements: Options for employee name tags to omit last names; ensuring a staff member trained in de-escalation strategies is present in the emergency department and other patient care areas; procedures for responding to violent or threatening incidents.
Annual Review: Each hospital must review and, when necessary, revise its plan annually, and distribute the current plan to all hospital employees, volunteers, the board of directors, relevant law enforcement agencies, and any other identified partners.
Incident Reporting System: Each hospital must establish and use a workplace violence incident reporting system that tracks and analyzes incidents, including the number of reported incidents and the number of incidents reported to law enforcement.

Affected Entities: All licensed hospitals in Vermont.

IntelliSee Relevance: High — Vermont Act 9 operationalizes the same preventive-control + verified-incident-record pattern that IntelliSee's continuous AI monitoring is engineered to support. Automated detection of weapons, aggressive behavior, and fall/distress events, combined with time-stamped incident records, directly strengthens a hospital's hazard assessment, security plan, and annual incident analysis obligations under Act 9, while reducing the manual burden on direct-care staff who would otherwise be the primary data source.

Vermont Hospital Workplace Violence Prevention Act (H.259 / Act 9)

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