Hostage-Shootout in Pennsylvania Illustrates Rising Violence Against U.S. Healthcare Workers

A man who took hostages in a Pennsylvania hospital during a shooting that killed a police officer and

On Saturday, Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, 49, carried a pistol and zip ties into the intensive care unit at UPMC Memorial Hospital in southern Pennsylvania’s York County and took staff members hostage before he was killed in a shootout with police. The incident, which killed a police officers and wounded five people -- a doctor, nurse, custodian and two other officers --  illustrates the escalating violence against healthcare workers and the challenges that hospitals face trying to protect them, the Associated Press reports.

As the AP reported, healthcare and social assistance employees suffered almost three-quarters of nonfatal attacks on workers in the private sector in 2021 and 2022 for a rate more than five times the national average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Archangel-Ortiz apparently intentionally targeted the hospital after he was in contact with the intensive care unit earlier in the week for medical care involving someone else, according to the York County district attorney. Such violence at hospitals is on the rise, often in emergency departments but also maternity wards and intensive care units, hospital security consultant Dick Sem said.

“Many people are more confrontational, quicker to become angry, quicker to become threatening,” Sem said. “I interview thousands of nurses and hear all the time about how they’re being abused every day.”

The Pennsylvania shooting is part of a wave of gun violence in recent years that has swept through U.S. hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the growing threats. Experts say that the violence has ramped up since the pandemic. Or, as Dr. Jay J. Doucet, director of the trauma division at University of California San Diego Health, told the American College of Surgeons in a piece that ran in October: “Surgeons being assaulted, battered, or killed is a fairly new phenomenon within civilian hospitals.” Doucet reported that UC had six surgeons killed over the past few years. He and other hospital leaders successfully advocated that attacks against healthcare workers be classified as a felony, not as a lesser misdemeanor. The new law took effect Jan. 1.

In February, a nationwide survey conducted by National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses, found that the majority of nurses have experienced workplace violence and nearly half have seen a rise in rates over the past year. The nurse’s union proposes a different solution, a focus on prevention through The Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act which was introduced in the Senate and the House (S 1176/H.R. 2663) and would mandate OSHA to create a federal standard that would require healthcare and social service employers to create, implement, and maintain effective workplace violence prevention plans.

According to the AP, other recent attacks on U.S. healthcare workers include:

— Last year, a man shot two corrections officers in the ambulance bay of an Idaho hospital while freeing a white supremacist gang member before he could be returned to prison. They were caught less than two days later.

— In 2023, a gunman killed a security guard and wounded a hospital worker in a Portland, Oregon, hospital’s maternity unit before being killed by police in a confrontation elsewhere. Also in 2023, a man opened fire in a medical center waiting room in Atlanta, killing one woman and wounding four.

— In 2022, a gunman killed his surgeon and three other people at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical office because he blamed the doctor for his continuing pain after an operation. Later that year, a man killed two workers at a Dallas hospital while there to watch his child’s birth.