Employment safety: health facilities.

Existing law regulates the operation of health facilities. Existing law, the California Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1973, establishes certain safety and other responsibilities of employers and employees, including the requirement that employers provide safety devices and safeguards reasonably necessary to render the employment safe. Willful or repeated violations are a crime. This bill would make findings and declarations concerning the lifting, repositioning, and transfer of patients in acute care hospitals and resulting injuries to hospital personnel. This bill would amend the California Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1973 to require an employer to maintain a safe patient handling policy, as defined, for patient care units, and to provide trained lift teams, as defined, or staff trained in safe lifting techniques in each general acute care hospital, except for specified hospitals. The safe patient handling policy would require the replacement of manual lifting and transferring of patients with powered patient transfer devices, lifting devices, or lift teams, as specified. As part of the injury and illness prevention programs required by existing regulations, employers would be required to adopt a patient protection and health care worker back and musculoskeletal injury prevention plan, which shall include a safe patient handling policy component, as specified, to protect patients and health care workers, as defined, in health care facilities. By changing the definition of a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.