St. Louis County prosecutors have spent the past year advocating for health care workers who have been victims of violence on the job.
"Anybody in the health care system will tell you they are treated like it's part of their job to be attacked at work," said Andrew Wrenn, the lead attorney for the hospital violence unit. "That really bothers me, because there's nobody out there whose job it is to take punches to the face, perhaps maybe professional fighters, professional boxers."
The unit began its work about a year ago. Much of the early effort focused on changing that narrative around workplace violence, said Prosecuting Attorney Melissa Price Smith.
"Don't let the hospitals write it off as a job hazard. These are assaults. These need to be reported. We want to see all of these cases. We want to review these cases," she said.
Wrenn said he has reviewed 50 to 75 cases in the past year. Prosecuting them comes with complications, he said. Federal privacy statutes can make it difficult to access medical records to learn about a patient's neurological or mental health state. And there are quirks of state law that limit what kinds of violence can be charged as felonies rather than just misdemeanors.
For example, Wrenn said, under state law, a black eye may not be a serious-enough injury to rise to the level of a felony.
"A lot of what the law requires prosecutors to prove is impairment," he said. "For a black eye, unless we could demonstrate there was some impairment rather than just a cosmetic injury, we would not be able to charge a felony in that case."
Additionally, while state law allows prosecutors to seek harsher penalties against health care workers in hospital settings, that does not apply to those who work in urgent care, outpatient clinics or home health.
Wrenn wants to make an assault on any health care worker in any location a felony.
"One of the reasons you want to do that is because if you're interrupting a patient's care, either as the patient yourself or a family member, that has an effect on the care they can provide," he said.
Wrenn said he'll work with lawmakers in the upcoming session to make those changes to state law.
Both Wrenn and Price Smith say their intent is not to target patients who may not be aware of what happened due to neurological or mental health problems. Wrenn said he is already working with the county's mental health courts and community providers to set up a diversion program for low-level cases.
"This whole concept is not designed to charge someone who doesn't know what's going on or who is unaware of their actions," Price Smith added. "This is not designed as any kind of gotcha to get them. I'm talking about the individuals who are in the emergency room who are impatient who decide to take a swing."
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