General acute care hospitals: licensed nurse-to-patient ratios.

Under existing law, the State Department of Public Health adopted regulations that establish minimum, specific, and numerical licensed nurse-to-patient ratios by licensed nurse classification and by hospital unit within a general acute care hospital, among other health facilities. Existing regulations require licensed nurse-to-patient ratios to represent the maximum number of patients assigned to one licensed nurse at any one time, and define "assigned" to mean the licensed nurse has responsibility for the provision of care to a particular patient within their scope of practice. This bill would require the department, when transmitting to a general acute care hospital the action to be taken on a substantiated violation of the regulation establishing licensed nurse-to-patient ratios, to simultaneously transmit the same information to the person who filed the claim of the violation and their collective bargaining agent or representative, if any. The bill would further require the department, if the action to be taken does not include a fine, to simultaneously transmit a statement of the reasoning for not imposing a fine to the person who filed the claim of the violation and their collective bargaining agent or representative, if any. The bill would require the statement to discuss, among other things, the investigatory steps taken by the department to investigate the claim of the violation and any mitigating evidence relied upon by the department to justify the decision not to impose a fine.