Campbell County Health discusses ways to limit violence to employees and patients
GILLETTE —- Across the country, violence against health care workers has increased over the past few years.
At a board retreat last month, Campbell County Health talked about what the organization has done since 2024 to curb violence against its staff.
“It is an issue everywhere, but what we are trying to communicate with the public here at Campbell County Health is that it’s always unacceptable,” CCH Public Relations Lead Caitlin Berkey said. “Our staff should be able to come in and do their jobs and not be worried about experiencing those types of situations.”
These concerns were highlighted by CEO/President of UCHealth Colorado Kevin Unger in a presentation to the board at last month’s retreat, who stated that healthcare workers have noted the increase in incidents, drawing from his own experience in Colorado.
“We have a safety huddle every morning, and it’s unbelievable the stories that you hear,” Unger said. “We are just seeing just things you would have never guessed we would see pre-COVID… There is an expectation in the emergency department that you’re going to be assaulted at some point during your career. It’s just kind of a known fact. We have to erase that and try to figure out how to keep people safe as we move forward.”
Tanya Allee, executive director of patient experience for CCH, said that in an employee engagement survey, a number of staff members expressed concern over workplace violence. Some noted there needs to be more investment in security to reduce the number of incidents.
These incidents often include both threats and physical violence. Nationally, the numbers of incidents in hospitals have increased drastically. Health care workers already are five times as likely to be injured on the job, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A BLS fact sheet covering workplace violence through 2021-2022 also reported that health care and social assistance professions held the greatest number of violence cases that require days off from work. The field sees 14.2 of these incidents per 10,000 full-time workers a year, followed by education, which has 8.4 incidents per 10,000 FTEs.
In a 2023 guest column for the magazine Wyoming Medicine, Vice President of the Wyoming Hospital Association Josh Hannes shined a spotlight on the rising issue, citing a 2022 article pointing to 121 employee compensation requests from Wyoming nurses due to alleged attacks, with Hannes noting that this only covered a small number of total cases.
“The total number of attacks is, without question, dramatically higher,” Hannes wrote.
CCH CEO Matt Shahan pointed to ongoing and re-evaluated efforts to curb workplace violence since 2024, including having on-site security, working with local law enforcement, having a visitor and vendor tracking system and limiting patient access to parts of the facility.
Shahan also said the hospital had begun tracking incidents of workplace violence. From September 2025 to February 2026, there were 77 “risk events” reported.
CCH Security Manager Adam Booth also said that all staff are required to go through annual education on workplace violence, using incident reporting, which has improved in recent years, to adapt CCH’s response and to flag offenders.
Beyond the organization, Shahan said that CCH leadership has also reached out to state policymakers on continuing efforts to provide support on the issue.
“We’ll continue to work with our associations to educate our Wyoming Legislature on the risks of not having enforceable rules in place as they relate to violence against healthcare workers,” said Shahan. “Our staff deserve to come to work knowing that they will not be hit, spit on, or verbally assaulted while trying to serve their community.”
While Wyoming House Bill 155, entitled the “Workplace Violence in Health Care Act,” was put forth during the 2025 legislative session, but it did not make it out of committee.
If passed, the bill would have required hospitals that receive state funding to record information on incidents of violence against healthcare workers and report them to the Department of Workforce Services on a monthly basis.
Efforts to create a felony offense for attacking health care workers in Wyoming have also thus far been unsuccessful, with a 2022 bill also not making it out of committee.
“No matter the number of events, any event is unacceptable and we must continue to evolve as health care providers and as a society to ensure the safety of our most important asset: our people,” Shahan said.
This story was published on April 25, 2026.