Health facilities: licensure.

Existing law provides for the licensure and regulation of health facilities, including general acute care hospitals, by the State Department of Public Health. Existing law requires the department, when an applicant for a general acute care hospital license meets the applicable requirements of licensure, to issue a single consolidated general acute care hospital license that includes more than one physical plant maintained and operated on separate premises or that has multiple licenses for a single health facility on the same premises if any of specified criteria are met. One of these criteria is that the physical plants maintained and operated by the licensee that are to be covered by the single consolidated license are located not more than 15 miles apart. If the physical plants are located more than 15 miles apart, a single consolidated license may be issued to a children's hospital under specified circumstances. Existing law also authorizes the State Public Health Officer to issue a single consolidated license for a general acute care hospital to Children's Hospital Oakland and San Ramon Regional Medical Center, as well as a single consolidated license for a general acute care hospital to Children's Hospital Oakland and the John Muir Medical Center, Concord Campus. This bill would eliminate the above-mentioned provisions applicable to single consolidated licenses for children's hospitals, and would, instead, permit the department to issue a single consolidated license for a children's hospital that has physical plants located not more than 35 miles apart if prescribed conditions are met. The bill would require, to the extent permitted by federal law, the payments to prescribed children's hospitals under the Medi-Cal Hospital/Uninsured Care Demonstration Project be adjusted in a specified manner, as prescribed until January 1, 2016, or the extension of prescribed federal waiver, whichever occurs first.