In an effort to address a growing need for mental health and addiction care, a bill was introduced on Monday in the state assembly to develop a minimum staffing requirement for behavioral health emergencies in California hospitals.
Introduced by Assemblymember Matt Haney, Assembly Bill 1001 would reportedly ensure there is enough qualified staff available in all units of a hospital to promptly assist those experiencing mental health and addiction crises.
The bill would require hospitals to have the following immediately available for hospital patients outside of psychiatric units: at least two psychiatric registered nurses and one trained staff member, as well as a staff member capable of caring for a patient’s psychosocial needs.
The California Department of Health Care Access and Information cited that in 2020, people with behavioral health diagnoses made up one-third of all inpatient hospital admissions.
But despite the need, there is currently no mandate on the amount of behavioral health staff members available to care for these patients, which has often resulted in long wait times.
Members of the California Nurses Association, a union comprised of over 100,000 nurses in the state, said that California hospitals are increasingly unprepared and lack specialized nurses to respond to the growing number of patients with behavioral health care needs.
“For patients who are suffering from an emergency, it could be a matter of life or death,” said Yvette Bassett, a registered nurse. “Having an appropriately skilled behavioral health team would not only save the life of our patients, but also provide the necessary support for staff and nurses to appropriately care for the patient.”
“It is very difficult to see a patient suffering from a behavioral health emergency and not have trained professionals available to treat them,” said Amy Preble, an ICU nurse. “The lack of expertise and resources not only hurts our patients, but puts nurses and other staff at risk for violence. We know when nurses aren’t safe, none of our patients are safe. Passage of this bill would indicate our respect for those who are suffering from behavioral health crises, all of our patients, and signal that nurses deserve protection at work.”
Haney said that not only does understaffing prevent patients from receiving the care they deserve, but also exacerbates already overworked hospital workers. The inability to care for patients is partially the reason why the state’s licensed nurse population are leaving the profession, he said.
“Instead of treating people with mental health and addiction issues, we’re pushing them back onto the street,” said Haney, who also serves as chair of the Fentanyl and Opioid Overdose Prevention Select Committee.
His office reports that out of the 500,000 licensed nurses in California, 348,000 are currently working in hospitals.
Haney added that the bill would fund a mental health and addiction staff training program with pre-existing behavior health care funds, so workers can learn how to de-escalate crises and better care for patients.
“If we don’t invest in this workforce, we’ll continue to see more nurses leaving the field and fewer patients getting the help they desperately need.”
12 comments
Yea so to meet these new standards they’re probably going to have less requirements for individuals less schooling less experience they’re better off being short staffed with professionals because you know they’re going to have to start hiring semi and non-professionals with a bill like this.
Bills, amendments, resolutions, more taxes it’s ridiculously out of control…
On it’s face this is an excellent and sorely needed idea, what’s unfortunate is lack of thought given to after emergency care. A psych crisis is rarely fixed by a single encounter with a trained professional. Merely discharging after mental health emergency Is akin to putting a bandaid on a damaged spurting artery.
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Is this bill reward for campaign contributions and votes from nurses union. It’s political goal creation of union jobs, to ensure future campaign contributions and union member votes.
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A rewrite to include increased post emergency outpatient staffing levels should be added, if it’s not too much trouble or a quick follow up bill. Then again such an effort might effect campaign contributions to DEMs from hospitals. But it is a start in correct direction.
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AB-1001 Health facilities: behavioral health emergency services.
https://tinyurl.com/4ndufbyr
I’m sure nurses union (and other unions) will fully endorse your idea about mandated staffing levels for everything. Preferably at the same 1:3 ratio enshrined for nurse staffing back in 1999.
Problem is, CA-style mandated staffing levels didn’t bring promised improvements of patient outcomes. There is no difference in patient mortality or post-op complications with the states without mandated staffing levels. And hospital infections in CA were higher than in states without mandated staffing (2013 study). The only patient outcome, which improved after mandated staffing, is so-called “failure to rescue”.
So, given the results of that failed experiment, what makes you think that mandated staffing levels for psych outpatient facilities will improve anything? Other than increasing the overall costs of care and campaign contributions from unions to Matt Haney and his ilk?
This is not to say that hospitals should be allowed to do whatever they want to cut personnel costs (while padding administrator salaries and increasing shareholder profits). Most of the countries, which don’t spend 20% of their GDP on health care, still have ways of ensuring that patients receive sufficient attention from nurses. These vary from mandated nurses-per-ward to recommended hours-per-patient to more complicated systems like RAFAELA in Scandinavian countries.
But in CA, where public employee unions own the legislature, we don’t care about things like efficiency and economy, do we? So it’s mandated staffing for us, the most stupid and the most expensive way.
Could be a good thing but you always have to hear the other side. When it comes to the mentally ill all over the streets of California the government isn’t doing a great job.
Government purposely pursues a policy to create chaos (random inconsistent lockdowns, woke culture, fake impeachments, threats of war, encouraging fentanyl, telling us we have no business seeing what teachers are teaching our kids, we should already be dead from global warming, and so on) so this is not a surprise.
@Ricardo Why is it the government’s responsibility to take care of the mentally ill? As far as I’m concerned it isn’t.
JURYISOUT So who’s job do you think it is. It is the government’s job to keep vagrants off of the street. There shouldn’t be one person in a city park or sidewalk sleeping in a tent or doorway. It is the government’s job to keep the streets clean of everything. This is not the middle ages, stop acting like it.
Minimum staffing levels are usually negotiated and placed in the Memorandum Of Understanding, not mandated through bills created by the Government. Seems like the Nurses Union is is doing an end around and asking for favors from the politicians they support. If this passes, and it probably will, then it will become another unfunded mandate and the cost will eventually be passed on to the consumer.
DEM controlled CA state legislature has never won an award for stellar bills thoroughly thought all the way thru. What has become common place is a bill passed and signed into law, causes tremendous harm, so they pass a bandaid bill or they put a Proposition on the ballot then spend millions of dollars on carefully crafted, group tested, advertising to fix their screw up.
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Example, AB-109 emptying CA prisons and caused massive county jail overcrowding in all 58 CA counties.
The fix, Prop 47 on which over ten million dollars was spent to con voters into passing it.
Prop 47 and AB-109 have turned county jails into short term stays for misdemeanor criminals. Sentenced misdemeanor criminals are routinely turned back out on our streets in matter of days or hours.
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A parole violation for convicted felon prior to AB-109 would get them sent back to state prison, that served as deterrence of additional crimes while on parole. Now days for 90+ percent of parole violators the maximum time a parolee will serve is 180 days in County Jail. Because of jail overcrowding that incarceration can end up being hours instead of days
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‘Sex offenders routinely released from California jails, records show’
https://tinyurl.com/bdjr2pvz
Dismounting soapbox.
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This only means increased health insurance costs for EVERYONE.
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If it’s one thing liberals know how to do and that is to spend public monies exorbitantly.
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Pfff… and which bodies are you going to use to fill those roles. People don’t want to work in hospitals. Much less in low paying, high risk places like psych units. Staffing was a massive is BEFORE you made people wear masks for 3 years and flooded units with increasing acuity and drug addiction. But go ahead. Do your California thing where you cherry pick bills that can’t ever be enforced so you can get your name in the paper.
And the bureaucracy gets larger. Government will need to hire new narcissistic workers to implement the bill.
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