Health facilities and clinics: clinical placements: nursing.

Existing law establishes the Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI) to oversee health planning and health policy research, including the health care workforce research and data center. Existing law, the Nursing Practice Act, establishes the Board of Registered Nursing within the Department of Consumer Affairs for the licensure and regulation of nurses. Existing law provides for the licensure and regulation of health facilities and clinics, as defined, by the State Department of Public Health. Existing law requires an organization that operates, conducts, owns, or maintains a health facility, and the officers thereof, to make and file with HCAI certain reports, including balance sheets and other financial statements. Existing law sets forth related reporting provisions for clinics. This bill would require a health facility or a clinic, whether or not it currently offers prelicensure clinical placement slots, to meet with representatives from an approved school of nursing or approved nursing program, upon request by the school or program, to discuss the clinical placement needs of the school or program. The bill would require a nursing school or program to annually prepare a report on clinical placements for nursing students and to submit it to the board, with updates. The bill would require the report to include the beginning and end dates of all academic terms within the subsequent calendar year for each clinical slot needed by a clinical group with content area and education level, and the number of clinical slots that the school or program has been unable to fill within the preceding calendar year. The bill would require the board to submit that information to HCAI. The bill would require a health facility or a clinic, whether or not it currently offers prelicensure clinical placement slots, to annually prepare and submit to HCAI a report, with updates, on clinical placements for nursing students. The bill would authorize HCAI to decide to phase in the types of health facilities or clinics required to report on clinical placements. Under the bill, the report would include, among other things, the estimated number of days and shifts that will be made available within the subsequent calendar year for student use for each patient population served in the health facility or clinic, as specified. The bill would require HCAI to post the report on its internet website in a manner that allows for the information in the report to be cross-referenced against the above-described information from the nursing school or program. The bill would authorize the board, upon request by a nursing school or program, to assist in identifying clinical placement slot opportunities to meet the clinical placement needs of that school or program, by conferring with health facilities or clinics within the appropriate geographic region of each school or program in an attempt to match available clinical placement slots with needed slots and to encourage the creation of new clinical placement slots at additional clinical training sites to meet school or program needs, as specified. The bill would require the board to report a summary of every request made by an approved school or program and of any assistance provided and the outcome of that assistance. The bill would prohibit any attempt to identify additional clinical placement slots by the board, a health facility, or a clinic from supplanting or disrupting the clinical placement of any nursing student for whom a clinical placement is already in progress, has already been scheduled, or is under agreement for future use by an approved school or program. The bill would condition implementation of its provisions on an appropriation. The bill would also make related legislative findings.