Assessing Workplace Violence Against Lone Workers In The HealthCare Sector

On December 4, 2024, Luigi Nicholas Mangione, 26, of Towson, Maryland, allegedly intentionally killed UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, in Midtown Manhattan. The killing sparked a wave of complaints in social media about the U.S. healthcare system, whether justified or not. It highlighted this sector’s vulnerability to being targeted by some patients/customers who feel aggrieved about the service and reimbursement they receive or are psychologically troubled to begin with and express their disorders by lashing out against their healthcare providers.

This article focuses on the vulnerability of a specific component of the healthcare sector, those who work remotely from their companies’ main facilities as they provide medical-related services to patients at their homes or other facilities.

The risk of workplace violence against a company’s or organization’s lone workers who perform their healthcare jobs outside their primary workplace facility, particularly in a client’s home, is categorized as Workplace Violence, Type II: Patient/Customer-on-Worker. In this type of workplace violence, an employee is attacked by a hostile patient at their home or by violent assailants while enroute to or upon return from such a remote site. The other four types of workplace violence are: Type I: Criminal (in which there is no direct relation between the attacker, such as a robber, and the employee), Type III: Worker-on-Worker (or ex-Worker-on-Worker (where the attackers are know...