NH healthcare workers face violence on 'daily basis.' A guard died. New law aims to help.

ROCHESTER — The death of a Frisbie Memorial Hospital security officer two years ago helped spur a new law designed to prevent assaults on health-care professionals around New Hampshire.

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed Senate Bill 459 alongside Seacoast health-care leaders Friday outside the hospital, just steps away from where security guard Rick Semo was assaulted in 2020.

The bill was hailed as a “first step” by lawmakers, establishing the framework to collect data on alleged abuse to help establish a health-care facility workplace violence prevention program.

The Rick Semo tragedy

Semo was 64 when he died in 2020 after sustaining head trauma while he was on duty at the Rochester hospital.

On December 13, 2020, a man punched him in the face outside the hospital’s emergency room entrance. Semo was pronounced dead five days later. The punch, police said at the time, caused Semo to fall and hit his head on the pavement. Semo's head hit hard enough to cause internal bleeding and a skull fracture, according to court documents filed by police.

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The attacker, Tyler Thurston, 29, of New Durham, agreed in 2021 to plead guilty to a negligent homicide charge.

Semo lived in Farmington. He was a father, an Army veteran and served as a reserve drill sergeant with Portsmouth's 1st /304th Regiment.

Tim Jones, chief executive officer of Frisbie Memorial Hospital, spoke about the tragedy Friday.

“Rick Semo was assaulted right here in this parking lot and died as a result of his injuries,” Jones said. “He was a Frisbie family member and served our staff and patients with compassion and empathy. His job was to ensure their safety, yet while protecting our campus, he became a victim. That's why this bill is so important.”

Violence in hospitals not unusual

Jones said the tragic death of Semo was not a one-off case of violence at the hospital. He and others in the field told Sununu health-care workers deal with abuse far too often.

“This is happening on a daily basis,” Jones said. “The pandemic led to an increase in violence against our health-care workers. Our health-care workers have been put in very difficult and often dangerous situations. Our own staff and health-care workers across the state and the country have been verbally and physically assaulted at times.”

TJ Lydon, a doctor from Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, said you can have a great team and an overall safe hospital, but violence can happen anywhere, anytime.

“One of our psychiatric social workers was assaulted yesterday in the Emergency Room,” Lydon said, adding incidents like that are nothing new. “In the ER, you get a lot of different people with different issues coming through. Sometimes these people get incredibly violent and they assault staff members. It happens more than you’d think.”

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Stephen Ahnen, president of the New Hampshire Hospital Association, said the abuse doesn’t help with staffing shortages the medical field is experiencing.

“It shouldn't be part of a health-care worker's job to come in and be harassed, be threatened, hit or kicked. Unfortunately, that's what is happening more frequently,” Ahnen said.

How does the bill help?

Jones said it is the first step in helping health-care leaders protect their staff.

“The signing of this bill at Frisbie Hospital means a great deal to us, because one of our own died because of violence against health-care workers,” Jones said.  “Now our employees and all health-care workers will be more protected than ever, which in turn allows them to do their jobs and serve patients and their families.”

Sununu said Friday there’s “no question” violence against health-care workers has been an issue for a long time. The frequency has increased, in part due to the coronavirus pandemic and staffing shortages, he said.

“The legislation will ensure oversight to bring ideas to the table,” Sununu said. He added it's "not the end all, be all, but a great first step. We have to do more.”

State Sen. Tom Sherman, D-Rye, a medical doctor and Sununu's opponent in the 2022 election for governor, said the bill means a great deal to him.

He said he has seen violence firsthand throughout his entire career, and it has been getting worse each year.

“All the doctors and nurses get trained on it every year, and yet every year it gets worse in spite of that training,” Sherman said. “This creates a mechanism for reporting and collecting data on these incidents. To ask ourselves how to decrease the violence, we have to have data to know what’s happening, where, how often.”

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What isn’t in the bill

Marc Grossman, an ER doctor at Portsmouth Regional Hospital, said despite incidents of violence escalating over the years, laws in New Hampshire have never protected health-care workers. He has seen it happen enough times that he began to advocate for more to be done.

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One part of the bill that didn’t make it to the final version was a change to how police are allowed to respond to these incidents. Currently, if police do not witness the physical assault between an employee and patient, they cannot immediately arrest the assailant without a warrant. In most cases, that means police have to get warrants and investigate before an arrest and charges can be made. An earlier version of the bill would have made violence against health-care workers an exception, similar to the way a domestic violence call is treated.

Grossman, Sherman and Lydon stressed they hope that will be reevaluated in the future.

Previous reporting from Kyle Stucker was used in this report.

This article originally appeared on Fosters Daily Democrat: Sununu signs healthcare workplace violence protection bill