‘Thousands and thousands’ more health workers needed to fight coronavirus, Gavin Newsom says
California needs “thousands and thousands” more health care workers to treat the incoming wave of coronavirus patients, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.
To meet that need, he signed an executive order that gives state officials power to let medical professionals do a wider range of work and allow nurses to oversee more patients at a time. He says the executive order will be in place through June 30, although the order itself does not mention that date.
So-called staffing ratio and ‘scope of practice’ regulations have been a controversial subject in the Legislature for years. Newsom didn’t say exactly how far his administration is going in terms of loosening those rules, but said they will give medical workers needed flexibility to fight the coronavirus.
He encouraged doctors, nurses, pharmacists, emergency medical technicians and other medical workers to sign up for the state’s new Health Corps at healthcorps.ca.gov to fight the disease.
“If you’re a nursing school student, a medical school student, we need you,” Newsom said during the Monday news conference. “If you just retired in the last few years, we need you.”
His administration estimates there are 37,000 people who have recently retired from a medical profession, are close to earning a medical or nursing degree or who are working part time in the field. Newsom encouraged those people to come forward and help the state accommodate a surge in patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus spreading across the globe.
Newsom’s executive order gives Department of Public Health Director Sonia Angell power to waive licensing and staffing requirements for hospitals “while protecting public health and safety.” It also lets Angell lift some licensing requirements for doctors.
It gives Department of Consumer Affairs Director Kimberly Kirchmeyer power to waive licensing and scope of practice rules for medical workers, including nurse practitioners. It also gives Emergency Medical Services Authority Director Dave Duncan power to waive regulations for emergency medical workers.
Stephanie Roberson, the lead lobbyist for the California Nurses Association, said the nurses need to see more detail on how the executive order will be carried out. The Nurses Association opposes changes to current staffing ratio requirements, which mandate that nurses can’t be tasked with caring for too many patients at once.
“We obviously would never support a waiver of ratios, and so we’re going to have to see how this looks for our nurses,” Roberson said. “We know that ratios save lives.”
Negotiations over how the executive order will be implemented are ongoing, Roberson said.
California Health Care Foundation CEO Sandra Hernandez praised Newsom for the executive order, although she noted that it’s unclear exactly which rules will be waived.
“The goal here is to unleash health workers to do what they’re trained to do,” she said. “We should be using everybody’s capability to the fullest extent possible.”
The California Association for Nurse Practitioners has been asking for the governor to lift requirements that require nurse practitioners to work under the direction of a physician. It’s not clear whether that will happen under the executive order, said Andrew Acosta, a spokesman for the group.
“Nurse practitioners are happy to be part of the equation,” he said. Acosta said they hope to learn more as they speak with officials at the Department of Consumer Affairs.
In California, the number of coronavirus hospitalizations doubled in four days to 1,432, Newsom said, while the the number of patients in ICU beds has tripled to nearly 600.
Hospitals are not yet overwhelmed, California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly said. Those who need beds and ventilators are getting them, he said.
But Newsom’s office projects that will change in the coming weeks if officials aren’t able to secure thousands more hospital beds and ventilators.
Projections show state will need an additional 50,000 beds, on top of the 75,000 its hospitals already had, by the second half of May, Ghaly said.
To meet that surge, the Army Corps of Engineers is looking at sites including the Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento to house some of the estimated additional beds the state needs, Newsom said.
The stay-at-home order issued earlier this month has “bought us time to prepare,” Newsom said. As a result, hospitals can likely continue to treat all the patients who come through their doors for the next few weeks, he said.
This story was originally published March 30, 2020 at 1:38 PM with the headline "‘Thousands and thousands’ more health workers needed to fight coronavirus, Gavin Newsom says."