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Update: Dialysis Patient Safety Act

September 2017

California State Senator Ricardo Lara announced today plans to hold SB 349 back from a vote during this Assembly session, to meet with stakeholders to strengthen the bill for when the legislature reconvenes later in the year.

Senator Lara has been a great health care champion and a champion for UNAC/UHCP and its members. We’ll continue to work with him to transform the dialysis industry in California so that dialysis caregivers like RNs, PCTs, social workers and other professionals can provide the best possible care for their patients.

In large part because of the involvement of dialysis caregivers, with the backing of UNAC/UHCP and NUHHCE, the bill has won every committee and floor vote so far as it made its way through the State Senate and Assembly—despite a massive campaign against it by the big dialysis corporations.

It’s easy to get frustrated with the legislative process, but this is how UNAC/UHCP won safe staffing ratios in hospitals. Decades of research have shown that when health care professionals are free to attend fully to every patient, lives are saved and patients have a better chance to go home to their loved ones healthy. That’s been true in hospitals. It’s true in dialysis clinics.

The Dialysis Patient Safety Act (SB 349) will strengthen patient safety in chronic dialysis clinics in three key ways:

  1. Safe caregiver-to-patient ratios
  2. Mandatory safe transition times
  3. Annual clinic safety inspections

We will keep you updated on developments with the bill.

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