California Assembly Bill AB2425 Amended / Bill

 BILL NUMBER: AB 2425AMENDED BILL TEXT AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY APRIL 5, 2016 INTRODUCED BY Assembly Member Brown FEBRUARY 19, 2016 An act to add Article 7 (commencing with Section 116090.5) to Chapter 5 of Part 10 of Division 104 of the Health and Safety Code, relating to public health. LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST AB 2425, as amended, Brown. Public health: incident site reports. Existing law establishes the State Department of Public Health in state government. Existing law vests within the department certain duties and powers to protect and preserve the public health.  Existing law establishes the Emergency Medical Services Authority in state government.  This bill would require the State Department of Public Health  and the Emergency Medical Services Authority to, by regulation, adopt standards and protocols to   to collaborate with representatives of various groups and adopt, on or before June 1, 2018, standards and protocols that  establish a uniform incident site report requirement for purposes of collecting statewide information on unintentional injury incidents. The bill would require those  regulations   standards and protocols  to be implemented on a statewide basis by every county, as prescribed.  The bill would require the department to periodically reconvene the representatives, when necessary, to modify the standards and protocols.  By imposing additional duties on local entities, 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, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to these statutory provisions. Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: yes. State-mandated local program: yes. THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:  SECTION 1.   (a)     The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:   (1) Data provided by the State Department of Public Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows unintentional injuries are the leading cause of hospitalization and death for California's children and youth from one to 19, inclusive, years of age and the leading cause of injury-related death for babies and infants under one year of age.   (2) Unintentional injury has persistently been the leading cause of death and hospitalization for California's children and youth for more than two decades. The State Department of Public Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that from 2003 to 2013, inclusive, unintentional injuries caused the death of nearly 10,000 California children and youth, hospitalized another 240,000, and sent more than 4 million others to the emergency room.   (3) The State Department of Public Health and the national Children's Safety Network report that in 2012, childhood unintentional injury cost California's health care system over six hundred seventeen million dollars ($617,000,000) in medical costs and more than three billion four hundred million dollars ($3,400,000,000) in medical and wage loss costs combined because of parent and guardian time off work caring for an injured child or dealing with the death of a child due to unintentional injury.   (4) The vast majority of unintentional injuries are predictable and preventable.   (5) The year 2016 is the start of a statewide campaign to make unintentional injury incidents a rare, and not a common, occurrence across the state in order to better protect the health and well-being of all California children and youth.   (b) (1) It is the intent of the Legislature that the State Department of Public Health take the lead role in collaborating with representatives from other health and safety state and local agencies, first responders, law enforcement, public health experts, and childhood injury prevention experts to do all of the following:   (A) Establish statewide best practice guidelines, standards, and incident site information collection tools to help collect data and information at the site of an unintentional injury involving a child or youth between zero and 19, inclusive, years of age.   (B) Aggregate statewide incident site data to better understand the underlying cause of, and details about, unintentional injury incidents.   (2) The goal is to provide more incident detail information to help determine the best preventative strategies for eliminating childhood unintentional injuries with an initial focus on vehicle, bicycle, and pedestrian crashes, drowning, burns, poisoning, suffocation, falls, nontraffic vehicle incidents, and sports-related traumatic brain injuries.   SECTION 1.   SEC. 2.  Article 7 (commencing with Section 116090.5) is added to Chapter 5 of Part 10 of Division 104 of the Health and Safety Code, to read: Article 7. Incident Site Reports  Standards and Protocols  116090.5. (a)  (1)    On or before June 1, 2018, the  departments   State Department of Public Health  shall, by regulation, adopt standards and protocols to establish a uniform incident site report requirement for purposes of collecting statewide information on unintentional injury incidents.  (2) The standards and protocols shall be developed in collaboration with representatives from other health and safety state and local agencies, first responders, fire agencies, law enforcement agencies, public health experts, and childhood injury prevention experts in order for the department to understand the details at incident sites for various types of unintentional injury.   (3) The department shall periodically reconvene these representatives, when necessary, to modify the standards and protocols.  (b) The  regulations   standards and protocols  adopted by the  departments   department  shall be implemented on a statewide basis by every county in the State of California for use by  first responders.   the appropriate local reporting entities identified in the standards and protocols.  (c) The  regulations   standards and protocols  shall, at a minimum, include the following: (1) A requirement  that, upon responding to an incident, a first responder prepare and provide an incident site report to its county   that a reporting entity utilize an incident site reporting best practices form and incident site investigation protocol, specific to each type of unintentional injury, to report information to existing local, regional, and statewide data systems and to the local  health department. (2) A requirement that the county health department be responsible for submitting the data received pursuant to paragraph (1) to the state's  EPICenter   EpiCenter  data system, no later than 60 days after receipt of the incident site report. (d) For purposes of this section, the following definitions shall have the following meanings: (1) "Departments"   "Department"  means the State Department of Public  Health and the Emergency Medical Services Authority.   Health.   (2) "First responder" includes, but is not limited to, every local law enforcement entity, fire department, and any other first responder or entity that arranges for, or provides, emergency medical services within its boundaries, including paramedic services.   (2) "Reporting entity" means the reporting entity identified in the standards and protocols developed by the State Department of Public Health.  (3) "Incident site reports" or "incident" relates to, among others, site reports or incidents that involve unintentional injuries from drownings, near drownings, burns, window falls, bicycle crashes, pedestrian crashes, sleep suffocation, kids left in cars, vehicle backovers, vehicle frontovers,  sports-related activities,  and poisoning.  SEC. 2.   SEC. 3.  If the Commission on State Mandates determines that this act contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement to local agencies and school districts for those costs shall be made pursuant to Part 7 (commencing with Section 17500) of Division 4 of Title 2 of the Government Code.