(a)  This section shall apply to psychiatric units of general acute care hospitals, acute psychiatric hospitals, psychiatric health facilities, crisis stabilization units, community treatment facilities, group homes, skilled nursing facilities, intermediate care facilities, community care facilities, and mental health rehabilitation centers.

(b)  (1)  The secretary or his or her designee shall develop technical assistance and training programs to support the efforts of facilities to reduce or eliminate the use of seclusion and behavioral restraints in those facilities that utilize them.

(2)  Technical assistance and training programs should be designed with the input of stakeholders, including clients and direct care staff, and should be based on best practices that lead to the avoidance of the use of seclusion and behavioral restraints. In order to avoid redundancies and to promote consistency across various types of facilities, it is the intent of the Legislature that the technical assistance and training program, to the extent possible, be based on that developed pursuant to Section 1180.2.

(c)  (1)  The secretary or his or her designee shall take steps to establish a system of mandatory, consistent, timely, and publicly accessible data collection regarding the use of seclusion and behavioral restraints in all facilities described in subdivision (a) that utilize seclusion and behavioral restraints. In determining a system of data collection, the secretary should utilize existing efforts, and direct new or ongoing efforts, of associated state departments to revise or improve their data collection systems. The secretary or his or her designee shall make recommendations for a mechanism to ensure compliance by facilities, including, but not limited to, penalties for failure to report in a timely manner. It is the intent of the Legislature that data be compiled in a manner that allows for standard statistical comparison and be maintained for each facility subject to reporting requirements for the use of seclusion and behavioral restraints.

(2)  The secretary shall develop a mechanism for making this information, as it becomes available, publicly available on the Internet. For data currently being collected, this paragraph shall be implemented as soon as it reasonably can be achieved within existing resources. As new reporting requirements are developed and result in additional data becoming available, this additional data shall be included in the data publicly available on the Internet pursuant to this paragraph.

(3)  At the direction of the secretary, the departments shall cooperate and share resources for developing uniform reporting for all facilities. Uniform reporting of seclusion and behavioral restraint utilization information shall, to the extent possible, be incorporated into existing reporting requirements for facilities described in subdivision (a).

(4)  Data collected pursuant to this subdivision shall include all of the data described in paragraph (3) of subdivision (d) of Section 1180.2.

(5)  The secretary or his or her designee shall work with the state departments that have responsibility for oversight of the use of seclusion and behavioral restraints to review and eliminate redundancies and outdated requirements in the reporting of data on the use of seclusion and behavioral restraints in order to ensure cost-effectiveness.

(d)  Neither the agency nor any department shall be required to implement this section if implementation cannot be achieved within existing resources, unless additional funding for this purpose becomes available. The agency and involved departments may incrementally implement this section in order to accomplish its goals within existing resources, through the use of federal or private funding, or upon the subsequent appropriation of funds by the Legislature for this purpose, or all of these.

(Added by Stats. 2003, Ch. 750, Sec. 2. Effective January 1, 2004.)