New bill to protect medical workers from violent visits

Bill stipulates that hospital, clinic director can prevent entrance for the next year if a person has committed acts of physical or verbal violence.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
As part of the health system’s fight to eliminate violence against medical staffers, the Knesset Labor, Social Affairs and Health Committee on Monday approved its second and third reading in the plenum of a bill allowing directors of institutions to keep a violent troublemaker off the premises.
The private member’s bill, initiated by Israel Beiteinu MKs Alex Miller, Anastasia Michaeli and David Rotem, stipulated that the hospital or clinic director can prevent entrance for the next year if a person has committed acts of physical or verbal violence, including threats and damage to the premises.
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T
he perpetrator, whether a patient or an accompanying person, has to be warned in writing that if the violation is repeated, entrance to the medical institution will be disallowed. However, if the perpetrator requires urgent medical care, the hospital will allow them in.
Committee chairman MK Haim Katz (Likud) welcomed the initiative as a “first achievement in the effort against violence in the hospitals and other medical facilities. We will continue to fight the ugly phenomenon and not allow those doing holy work to be threatened.”
Miller noted that acts of violence against doctors, nurse and others “are a worrisome and horrible phenomenon whose incidence is growing all the time. The law will make people think twice before they threaten or harm people sent to save lives and treat their health and that of their loved ones.”
Drs. Yehiel Arkin and Katalina Markovich, both community physicians, argued the bill is not suited to medical institutions in the community and should be expanded to allow immediate and without warning removal of physically and verbally violent people and include sanctions against them.