Patient visitation.

In a measure introduced by Assembly Member Garcia, with a coauthor Senator Rubio, the proposal would require general acute care hospitals to accommodate a family or friend caregiver for patients with physical, intellectual, or developmental disabilities or cognitive impairment, including dementia, allowing the caregiver to accompany the patient as needed and outside standard visiting hours. The aim, as described in the measure, is to enable the patient to fully and equally benefit from the hospital’s goods, services, or facilities while maintaining a focus on safety and orderly operations.

The core obligation can be limited if the hospital reasonably determines that the caregiver’s presence would endanger the visitor, the patient, staff, or other visitors, or would significantly disrupt hospital operations. The measure preserves room for hospitals to deny entry to individuals who are violent or potentially violent and to withhold visitation if the delivery of medical care would be impeded. Hospitals may impose legitimate health and safety requirements on visitors, such as masking, excluding sick visitors, restricting access to certain areas, or prohibiting certain items, and they may establish other reasonable visitation restrictions beyond the disability-related visitation. In circumstances requiring restricted access, hospitals should facilitate visitation by family members or caregivers to the greatest extent possible while maintaining safety, and the policy expressly allows restrictions to visitation during state, public health, or local emergencies to prevent or limit the spread of disease.

Enforcement details are not specified in the text; compliance would presumably occur within the existing licensure and complaint processes overseen by the state health regulator. The measure states that it does not create new civil or criminal liability for hospitals that comply and it asserts that no reimbursement is required by local agencies or school districts, though the legislative digest notes a potential local program impact in broader fiscal terms. The measure applies to a defined class of hospitals and does not extend to other health facilities, and there is no explicit effective date within the text.

Beyond the procedural changes, the policy expands the scope of who may participate in a patient’s care by recognizing a “family or friend caregiver” as an accompanying visitor for eligible patients, while maintaining a framework that allows hospitals to balance patient involvement with health, safety, and operational considerations. The measure interacts with existing rights for certain relatives under current visitation rules by broadening access to visitors for patients with disabilities or cognitive impairment, subject to the same safety safeguards and emergency exceptions.