This bill is our sponsored legislation that will expand current notice requirements to 180 days, for hospitals and health facilities closing or significantly changing the services they will provide, along with creating new oversight protections under the Attorney General’s office.
The legislation threatens patient safety by authorizing the use of paramedics to provide healthcare services currently provided by physicians, registered nurses and social workers. They modeled this bill after one of the current OSHPED authorized pilot projects, where community paramedics can direct patients away from the emergency department to a sobering center. Because AB 1795 would expand paramedic scope of practice (and increase industry profits) at the expense of safety, CNA is strongly opposed to the bill. We have always opposed these projects from the outset and will continue to organize against any attempts to solidify these changes through legislation.
This bill would enact the Community Paramedicine Act of 2018 and would implement the five paramedicine pilot projects contained in OSHPD’s HWPP #173: (1) post-discharge follow-up; (2) directly observed tuberculosis therapy; (3) case management services to frequent 911 users; (4) hospice services to treat patients in their homes in response to a 911 call; and (5) alternate destination transport to a behavioral health facility or sobering center. CNA is opposed to this bill.
CNA is opposed to this bill benefiting a single company, the sponsor of this bill. AB 1627 would expand the scope of practice of phlebotomists to allow them to access intravenous catheters for the purpose of withdrawing blood from, and flushing, a peripheral intravenous catheter of a patient receiving infusion therapy. AB 1627 also requires the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) to revise its regulations for certified phlebotomists to also include education and training on withdrawing blood from, and flushing, a peripheral intravenous catheter. To be clear, this is a brand new function that phlebotomists have not performed before and will therefore require more involved education and training than that required for venipuncture. As a result, CDPH will have to develop more involved and significant regulations to address the more complex education and training required for phlebotomists to be able to perform this new function. AB 1627 poses a threat to the health and safety of hospitalized patients through its effort to benefit a single company while deskilling a central function of professional nursing practice: the care and management of invasive devices and the management of the therapeutic infusions that would be interrupted in order to use the PIVO device for blood withdrawal.
This bill would dangerously expand the authority ofunlicensedmedical assistants to engage in a professional activity fraught with the potential for serious patient harm. AB 608 would permit medical assistants to draw up and prepare local anesthetics for use by a physician and surgeon, podiatrist, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, or certified nurse-midwife. This activity is currently prohibited, and for good reason. Local anesthetics that are commonly used for office-based procedures are not without risks to patients even when prepared and administered by licensed professionals. The inviolable patient protection standard is that the person administering a medication should also be the one preparing it for administration to a patient. In addition to our vigorous objections to any modification of this standard, AB 608 does not even require that the physician performing a procedure actually observe the withdrawal process to assure compliance with aseptic technique for use for a specific patient during a specific procedure. Instead, the bill only requires that one of the aforementioned licensed practitioners be present in the facility while the anesthetic agent is being drawn up and that a licensed practitioner verifies that each syringe label is accurate. Moreover, the licensed practitioner who is present in the facility at the time the medical assistant withdraws and prepares the local anesthetic does not have to be the licensed practitioner who actually administers the local anesthetic to a patient during a procedure. This legislation would also inappropriately allow for the bulk preparation of local anesthetic filled syringesto be used during various procedures throughout the day by various physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, or certified nurse-midwives. The current requirement that an appropriately licensed provider prepares and administers medication or that a licensed provider prepares medication for administration by other licensed providers in a manner consistent with the highest level of pharmaceutical safe practices should not be watered down to allow legalization of any existing unsafe and illegal medical practices.
CNA opposed this anti-regulatory bill which would have required OAL to forward a copy of each major regulation to the Legislature for review; allowed the Legislature to enact a statute to override the effective date of a regulation; and required every state agency to divert its resources away from protecting the health and safety of workers and instead conduct a review of its regulations and repeal those identified as duplicative, overlapping, inconsistent, or out of date.
CNA is opposed to another bad anti-regulatory bill based on a legislative proposal from ALEC. This bill specified that a person has a right to engage in a lawful profession or vocation without being subject to an occupational regulation that imposes a substantial burden on that right. The bill also would have required that each occupational regulation be narrowly tailored to fulfill a legitimate public health, safety, or welfare objective. The bill also would have allowed anyone to bring an action to litigate whether or not a board’s (including the BRN) regulations met these standards, thus expanding judicial authority over administrative agencies like the BRN.
CNA has opposed this anti-regulatory bill which would have required every state entity (including agencies, departments, boards, bureaus, and commissions) to divert its public resources away from protecting the health and safety of workers and instead spend its time reviewing its regulations, identify any regulations that are duplicative, overlapping, inconsistent, or out-of-date, and to report those findings to the Legislature and Governor.
This bill seeks to create a new license category for athletic trainers. Our position on this issue has always been that nurses believe in patient protection and advocacy, and strongly agree athletes and student athletes are safer when there is a qualified healthcare professional on the sidelines during games and practices. However, this bill does not include provisions to directly address the issue. Instead, AB 3110 creates a new licensed healthcare professional with a scope of practice that is not well defined and extends beyond the setting in which athletic trainers currently practice. CNA is opposed unless amended to AB 3110.
This bill would have permitted a hospital owned by the City of Long Beach to request an additional seismic safety extension before January 1, 2025, of the seismic safety requirement that hospital buildings be rebuilt or retrofitted in order to be capable of withstanding an earthquake. We represent the nurses at Community Hospital in Long Beach, which is a hospital in Assemblymember O’Donnell’s district. This extension is crucial in finding a way to keep the hospital open. CNA is in support of AB 2591.
This bill puts into statute existing state regulations that require CDPH Licensing and Certification to inspect hospitals for compliance with sections of the health and safety code on nurse to patient ratios. As the architects of nurse to patient ratios in the state of California, we are in support of this bill.
Prevents employers from requiring workers sign waivers of rights agreements as a condition of employment. Recent revelations of widespread sexual harassment have focused policy makers on the need to ensure that victims have access to justice and that violators are held accountable. They have also demonstrated the harm that comes from keeping these cases confidential and exposing countless other women to the same treatment. As a predominantly female workforce CNA is proud to support this legislation.
Celebrate Nearly 20 Years of California's Nurse-to-Patient Ratios!
Nurses fought long and hard for nurse-to-patient ratios because nurses care for their patients. Listen as RNs who were directly involved in the struggle for ratios talk about the fight, and the excitement of winning one of the landmark patient gains in the country and the ONLY patient ratios law in the United States.
