BILL ANALYSIS �
SENATE HEALTH
COMMITTEE ANALYSIS
Senator Ed Hernandez, O.D., Chair
BILL NO: SB 844
S
AUTHOR: Price
B
AMENDED: As Introduced
HEARING DATE: April 13, 2011
8
CONSULTANT:
4
Hansel
4
SUBJECT
Health facilities: general acute care hospitals
SUMMARY
Allows, for the purposes of hospital licensing
requirements, dietary services to be provided either at the
hospital, or in another hospital immediately adjacent to
the hospital, as long as dedicated facilities are in place
to accommodate the delivery of these services.
CHANGES TO EXISTING LAW
Existing law:
Provides for the licensing and regulation of health
facilities, including general acute care hospitals, by the
Department of Public Health (DPH).
Requires, under statute and regulations, general acute care
hospitals to provide eight basic services: medical,
nursing, surgical, anesthesia, laboratory, radiology,
pharmacy, and dietary services, defined as providing safe,
satisfying, and nutritionally adequate food for patients
with appropriate staff, space, equipment, and supplies.
Requires DPH and the Office of Statewide Health Planning
and Development (OSHPD) to develop regulations that
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prescribe standards for the physical plant, staffing, and
services of health care facilities, including general acute
care hospitals.
Requires DPH to allow any general acute care hospital
facility that needs to relocate services on an interim
basis, as part of its approval plan for compliance with
hospital building or seismic standards, flexibility in
achieving compliance with licensing standards so long as
public safety is not compromised.
Specifies, under DPH regulations, several requirements for
dietary services in hospitals, including a requirement that
a registered dietician be employed on a full-time or
part-time basis, that sufficient dietetic service personnel
be employed to provide for the nutritional needs of
patients, a requirement that equipment necessary for the
proper preparation, serving, and storage of food be
provided, and a requirement that food supplies meet certain
standards for amount and quality.
This bill:
Allows, for the purposes of hospital licensing
requirements, dietary services to be provided either at the
hospital or in another hospital immediately adjacent to the
hospital as long as dedicated facilities are in place to
accommodate the delivery of these services.
FISCAL IMPACT
This bill has not been analyzed by a fiscal committee.
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
According to the author, SB 844 would provide an exemption
to the requirement that general acute care hospitals have
dietary services on the hospital property, when dietary
services can be accessed by an adjacent building with
dedicated facilities to accommodate their delivery. The
author states that this is needed to help Hollywood
Presbyterian Hospital, which must temporarily shut down its
dietary services department in order to accommodate seismic
upgrades to its emergency room. While construction is
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occurring, the hospital must use the dietary services from
the hospital immediately adjacent until construction is
completed.
The author argues that in the case of Hollywood
Presbyterian Hospital, the only other option would be to
shut down the emergency room, which would result in laying
off hospital workers and require a rerouting of
approximately 35,000 emergency room visits per year.
Hospital licensing requirements
General acute care hospitals are required to offer eight
basic services: medical, nursing, surgical, anesthesia,
laboratory, radiology, pharmacy, and dietary services.
They are also permitted to offer several different types of
supplemental services, including emergency medical, burn
center, psychiatric, intensive care newborn, cardiovascular
surgery, chronic dialysis, and radiation therapy services.
Health facilities, including hospitals, are permitted to
request program flexibility to use alternate concepts,
methods, procedures, techniques, equipment, personnel, as
long as statutory requirements are met, with the prior
written approval of DPH or OSHPD. However, this does not
generally extend to the relocation of services outside of
the hospital campus, or the sharing of services with other
hospitals, as is proposed by this bill.
DPH regulations outline several requirements for dietary
services that hospitals are required to meet, including a
requirement that a registered dietician be employed on a
full-time or part-time basis, that sufficient dietetic
service personnel be employed to provide for the
nutritional needs of patients, a requirement that equipment
necessary for the proper preparation, serving, and storage
of food be provided, and a requirement that food supplies
meet certain standards for amount and quality.
COMMENTS
1. Flexibility for DPH. This bill, as drafted, could
require DPH to approve location of dietary services in an
adjacent location even if the arrangement violates other
licensing provisions regarding adequate space, staffing,
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and food storage. By increasing the number of meals
prepared in the adjacent facility's dietary service, the
arrangement could impact both facilities' ability to meet
these requirements. A suggested amendment would be to
additionally require that the arrangement to provide
dietary services in an adjacent hospital must meet all
applicable requirements pertaining to the provision of
dietary services and must not impact the ability of the
adjacent facility to meet the requirements on an ongoing
basis.
POSITIONS
Support: None received
Oppose: None received
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