Executive brief · Hospital security & safety
Can you prove your workplace violence prevention program is working?
Policy is not proof. Get the 2026 evidence-readiness brief built for hospital security and safety leaders – and find out whether your program could survive a surveyor’s next visit.
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The standard just changed.
Effective January 1, 2026, The Joint Commission replaced its National Patient Safety Goals with 14 National Performance Goals. NPG 2a (Preventing Workplace Violence) and NPG 11 (Creating a Secure and Safe Physical Environment) raise the bar from “do you have a program?” to “can you show it’s being carried out?”
That means consistent documentation, trend analysis, corrective action, and governing-body visibility – on demand, not assembled the week before a survey.
This brief covers the five questions every hospital security and safety leader should be able to answer right now – and the operational evidence it takes to answer them.
The bar moved from “do you have a program?” to “can you show it’s being carried out?”
The Joint Commission, National Performance Goals – effective January 1, 2026
Inside the brief
Five questions. One operating record.
Can you prove your program is being executed – not just that it exists?
Incident reporting
Do you have visibility into your highest-risk units when you can’t be there?
Patrol and high-risk rounding
Can you defend every incident response with data, for any incident, on demand?
Response and dispatch
Can you make worksite risk review continuous instead of an annual scramble?
Trend analysis
Can you brief your board on program health in five minutes, in the language they use?
Governing-body reporting
Each question maps to an operational record – incident reporting, patrol and high-risk rounding, response and dispatch, trend analysis, and governing-body reporting – and to the evidence a surveyor, board, or legal team will ask for.
American Hospital Association, “The Burden of Violence to U.S. Hospitals,” June 2025 (2023 data).
The estimated annual cost of workplace and community violence to U.S. hospitals – including roughly $3.6B in pre-event costs (training, staffing, technology, facility modifications) and $13.2B in post-event costs, primarily uncompensated treatment for violence-related injury.
Visibility without action is just surveillance. Evidence is what your board – and your next surveyor – need next.
What you’ll take away
By the end of this brief, you’ll know:
The health systems best positioned for the next era of workplace violence prevention won’t be distinguished by how many policies or binders they maintain – but by their ability to show, on demand, how prevention is being executed across every unit, shift, and facility.
Prefer to talk it through first? Request a Workplace Violence Evidence Readiness Assessment
Keep going
Industry
Healthcare security operations
How health systems run security across units, shifts and facilities.
Policy is not proof.
Get the 2026 evidence-readiness brief and the six-question self-assessment for hospital security and safety leaders.