RNs Condemn New 'Emergency Order' to Evade Ratio Law

RNs Condemn New 'Emergency Order' to Evade Ratio Law

For Immediate Release March 7, 2005

Contact: Charles Idelson, 510-273-2246 or 415-559-8991 (cell)


RNs Condemn New ‘Emergency Order’ to Evade Ratio Law

Schwarzenegger Flouts Courts in Latest Attack on Patient Safety



The California Nurses Association today blasted the decision of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for seeking a new “emergency order” to block safer staffing in hospitals in open defiance of a Superior Court decision repealing his prior emergency regulation.



Moments after Sacramento Superior Court Judge Judy Holzer Hersher issued a tentative order late Thursday to vacate Gov. Schwarzenegger’s illegal emergency order, the governor filed an identical new emergency order, an action taken with virtually no public notice - and concealed this decision from the court during an extensive hearing on Friday.



On Friday, Judge Hersher issued a final decision finding the governor and his Department of Health Services had acted illegally in seeking to overturn a law enacted by the legislature.



“This new ‘emergency order’ should be dead in the water. This governor has no more authority to overthrow the judicial system than it does to overthrow the legislature,” said CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.



“Arnold Schwarzenegger is not above the rule of law,” said DeMoro. “You don’t change a decision you and your corporate sponsors don’t like simply by flouting the law of the land. Apparently this governor believes there is no legislative or judicial branch of government, only him.”



Following her decision on Friday, Judge Hersher is expected to issue a formal order imminently. CNA cited its concerns in not only the new emergency order, but also widely disseminated comments to the media by Kim Belshe, the secretary of health and human resources, that the administration “strongly rejects” the decision, will try to stop it from taking effect, and is “not backing down.”



CNA also said it will be in touch with hospitals across the state insisting that they comply with the judge’s order and immediately fully restore RN-to-patient ratios in emergency rooms, and implement minimum staffing of one RN to every five patients in general medical units, the two hospital areas affected by the initial emergency ruling and the court decision. Many hospitals, CNA noted, are already in compliance.



Notably, the new emergency order contains all the illegalities of the original version. It places economic considerations - hospital profits - ahead of patient safety, and offers not a shred of corroborative evidence to support the allegations of hospital closures and other claims made by the governor and the hospital industry lobbyists as the pretext for the “emergency.”



In her final decision, Judge Hersher declared:



* The initial emergency regulation “was an abuse of discretion and not adopted in the manner required by law.”
* “Hospitals were closing and citing economics and staff shortages well before the original regulation took effect on January 1, 2004.”
* “DHS has failed to establish any nexus between the reported closings and the implementation of the staffing regulations. Most importantly, DHS does not even contend that the ‘reports’ of the closures are true.”
* Even if true, such claims would not be sufficient for the governor to overturn the law “because such considerations are inconsistent with the fundamental purposes of the statute to ensure that nurses be ‘accessible and available to meet the needs of patients’…”
* “The Court interprets the legislation as intended to protect and ensure the ‘quality of patient care’ for patients that already have been admitted to ‘acute care settings’.”



The decision “could not be more clear,” DeMoro said. “In issuing an identical emergency order, this governor has signaled a degree of lawlessness and defiance of the Constitution that should alarm all Californians.”



“We are confident that this latest assault on our democracy will not stand,” DeMoro said.