Gatherings in California are limited to no more than three
households and must be held outdoors, according to new
CDPH guidance released late last week.
This year, a new law went into effect, SB 234 (Chapter 244,
Statutes of 2019), that aims to increase the availability of
family child care homes. The sponsor of the legislation, the
Child Care Law Center, reached out to CSAC to share resources
with counties regarding the implementation of this law.
SB 234 makes various changes regarding licensing and zoning for
family child care homes, including several that directly impact
county regulations. These include:
After significant and sustained advocacy by the CSAC Rural Caucus
and a special CSAC Rural Caucus Working Group led by CSAC Second
Vice President Ed Valenzuela of Siskiyou County, the state
applied a new case metric for small counties today.
The new metric, which focuses on absolute case counts rather than
the Blueprint for a Safer Economy’s calculation of cases per
100,000 residents, already helped both Lake and Modoc Counties to
remain in their current tiers.
This week, California Health Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly had
mixed news for counties today. Perhaps the more important news is
what he didn’t cover at the customary noon press conference
today: the application of new case rate flexibility for small
counties. This development came as a result of strong advocacy by
the CSAC Rural Caucus and a special CSAC Rural Caucus Working
Group, both led by CSAC Second Vice President Ed Valenzuela of
Siskiyou County. We cover the new small county metric in more
detail below.
CSAC is pleased to share that nearly all of the state’s COVID-19
guidance is now available in 13 languages on the state’s www.Covid19.ca.gov website. County
Supervisors from around the state strongly advocated for the
translation of critical COVID-19 state guidance, and the state
estimates that 85 percent of the documents are translated at this
time. The state’s goal is to have all COVID-19 guidance
translated by the end of this month.
This week, CSAC hosted the California Health and Human Services
(CHHS) Secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, on the State’s efforts to
expand access to COVID-19 testing through their new PerkinElmer
contract. PerkinElmer, a major diagnostics company, will be
contractually obligated to add up to 150,000 new laboratory
COVID-19 tests per day. During the briefing Secretary Ghaly
reported the impetus behind this contract was to eliminate supply
chain competition with other states across the country.
This week, California Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary
Dr. Mark Ghaly announced improvements in COVID-19
transmission in nine counties today, allowing Alameda,
Riverside, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, and Solano to move from
the highest purple tier to the red tier. El Dorado, Lassen, and
Nevada move to the orange tier, and Mariposa moves to the yellow
– or lowest – tier. He also indicated that the state would
release new guidance soon allowing nail salons to operate
indoors within counties in the purple tier.
This week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
announced they would not move forward with their proposed
Medicaid Fiscal Accountability Rule (MFAR). The federal rule,
announced at the end of 2019, was intended to increase Medicaid
fiscal transparency but attracted a host of responses from state
and local governments voicing concerns, including the state of
California and CSAC.
On Tuesday, the Stakeholder Advisory Committee for the Master
Plan for Aging met and submitted their final recommendations to
the Governor’s Administration for consideration in the state’s
Master Plan for Aging. While the COVID-19 pandemic caused some
delays in the Master Plan timeline and forced meetings to be
conducted remotely, progress on this important initiative
continued and the Governor is anticipated to release the state’s
Master Plan for Aging in December.
The California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems
(CAPH) and the California Health Care Safety New Institute (SNI),
published an
article highlighting the critical role county Whole Person
Care (WPC) pilot programs have had in the COVID-19 response.
CSAC’s Health and Human Services policy committee tracked a
number of bills this legislative cycle. All of the following
bills passed both houses and are awaiting action from the
Governor.
Oppose
AB 1976 (Eggman): Mental Health Services: Assisted Outpatient
Treatment.
The California Department of Public Health released new
guidance allowing necessary in-person child supervision
and limited instruction, targeted support services, and
facilitation of distance learning in “pods” of up to 14 children
and two adults in all schools. The guidance also provides
instruction on returning to work or school following a COVID-19
diagnosis and additional child care guidance.
Governor Newsom declined to elaborate today on the resignation of
the state’s leading public health official, Dr. Sonia Angell. Dr.
Angell submitted her resignation Sunday night, nearly two weeks
after the state first revealed a major technical glitch affecting
positive COVID-19 case data.
The Governor insisted that the backlog of data in the state’s
CalREDIE laboratory reporting system had been processed over the
weekend and sent to counties for validation and demographic
details before being publicly available within the week.
On the heels of Governor Newsom’s
recent statement that the state’s positive case rate
was declining slightly, the California Department of Public
Health (CDPH) announced
this week that the state data is likely underreported due to
a serious technological glitch.
The Bureau of State Audits released its audit
of county implementation of the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPS
Act) for involuntary mental health treatment this week, finding
that while counties implement the Act properly, a lack of
treatment options, care coordination, access to data, and funding
transparency hampers positive outcomes for those who are
frequently held or conserved involuntarily.
The Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) announced their
request for a 12-month extension to the current Section 1115(a)
Medicaid Waiver and the 1915(b) Specialty Mental Health Services
Waiver.
Late last week, President Trump
announced the signing of four Executive Orders to lower
prescription drug prices for patients. The high cost of
life-saving prescription drugs, like insulin, has been considered
a crisis by many patients, physicians and lawmakers.
Governor Newsom modified guidance this week to allow for personal
care services in outdoor settings upon approval by the local
health officer. In counties on the state Monitoring List,
services including hair styling, barbering, facials, manicure and
pedicures, and massage may operate outside within certain
parameters set by the state. All services must be rendered
outdoors, and operators may utilize a tent or canopy as long as
no more than one side is closed to allow for sufficient air
movement.
