California Legislature—2015–16 Regular Session

Assembly Bill No. 918

Introduced by Assembly Member Mark Stone

February 26, 2015

An act to amend Section 1180.3 of the Health and Safety Code, relating to health and care facilities.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

AB 918, as introduced, Mark Stone. Health and care facilities: seclusion and behavioral restraints.

Existing law requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to develop technical assistance and training programs to support the efforts of community care facilities, group homes, skilled nursing facilities, intermediate care facilities, and mental health rehabilitation centers, among others, to reduce or eliminate the use of seclusion and behavioral restraints in these facilities. Existing law requires the secretary to take steps to establish a system of mandatory, consistent, timely, and publicly accessible data collection regarding the use of seclusion and behavioral restraints in all facilities.

The bill would require these facilities to report to the protection and advocacy agency designated by the Governor each death or serious injury of a person occurring during, or related to, the use of seclusion or behavioral restraints.

Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: no. State-mandated local program: no.

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1.  

Section 1180.3 of the Health and Safety Code is
amended to read:

1180.3.  

(a)  This section shall apply to psychiatric units of
general acute care hospitals, acute psychiatric hospitals, psychiatric
health facilities, crisis stabilization units, community treatment
facilities, group homes, skilled nursing facilities, intermediate care
facilities, community care facilities, and mental health
rehabilitation centers.

(b)  (1)  The secretary or his or her designee shall develop
technical assistance and training programs to support the efforts
of facilities to reduce or eliminate the use of seclusion and
behavioral restraints in those facilities that utilize them.

(2)  Technical assistance and training programs should be
designed with the input of stakeholders, including clients and direct
care staff, and should be based on best practices that lead to the
avoidance of the use of seclusion and behavioral restraints. In order
to avoid redundancies and to promote consistency across various
types of facilities, it is the intent of the Legislature that the technical
assistance and training program, to the extent possible, be based
on that developed pursuant to Section 1180.2.

(c)  (1)  The secretary or his or her designee shall take steps to
establish a system of mandatory, consistent, timely, and publicly
accessible data collection regarding the use of seclusion and
behavioral restraints in all facilities described in subdivision (a)
that utilize seclusion and behavioral restraints. In determining a
system of data collection, the secretary should utilize existing
efforts, and direct new or ongoing efforts, of associated state
departments to revise or improve their data collection systems.
The secretary or his or her designee shall make recommendations
for a mechanism to ensure compliance by facilities, including, but
not limited to, penalties for failure to report in a timely manner. It
is the intent of the Legislature that data be compiled in a manner
that allows for standard statistical comparison and be maintained
for each facility subject to reporting requirements for the use of
seclusion and behavioral restraints.

(2)  The secretary shall develop a mechanism for making this
information, as it becomes available, publicly available on the
Internet. For data currently being collected, this paragraph shall
be implemented as soon as it reasonably can be achieved within
existing resources. As new reporting requirements are developed
and result in additional data becoming available, this additional
data shall be included in the data publicly available on the Internet
pursuant to this paragraph.

(3)  At the direction of the secretary, the departments shall
cooperate and share resources for developing uniform reporting
for all facilities. Uniform reporting of seclusion and behavioral
restraint utilization information shall, to the extent possible, be
incorporated into existing reporting requirements for facilities
described in subdivision (a).

(4)  Data collected pursuant to this subdivision shall include all
of the data described in paragraph (3) of subdivision (d) of Section
1180.2.

(5)  The secretary or his or her designee shall work with the
state departments that have responsibility for oversight of the use
of seclusion and behavioral restraints to review and eliminate
redundancies and outdated requirements in the reporting of data
on the use of seclusion and behavioral restraints in order to ensure
cost-effectiveness.

(d)  Neither the agency nor any department shall be required to
implement this section if implementation cannot be achieved within
existing resources, unless additional funding for this purpose
becomes available. The agency and involved departments may
incrementally implement this section in order to accomplish its
goals within existing resources, through the use of federal or private
funding, or upon the subsequent appropriation of funds by the
Legislature for this purpose, or all of these.

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(e) A facility described in subdivision (a) shall report each death
or serious injury of a person occurring during, or related to, the
use of seclusion or behavioral restraints. This report shall be made
to the agency designated in subdivision (i) of Section 4900 of the
Welfare and Institutions Code no later than the close of the
business day following the death or injury. The report shall include
the encrypted identifier of the person involved, and the name, street
address, and telephone number of the facility.

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