As often as a vacancy occurs in a hospital under the jurisdiction of the Director of Developmental Services, he shall appoint, as provided in Section 4481, a clinical director, a hospital administrator, a hospital director, a medical program director, and program directors.

A hospital administrator shall be a college graduate preferably with an advanced degree in hospital, business or public administration and shall have had experience in this area. He shall receive a salary which is competitive with other private and public mental hospital administrators.

A clinical director for a state hospital for the developmentally disabled shall be a person who is a physician, psychologist, registered nurse, clinical social worker, physical therapist or psychiatric technician, and licensed as such pursuant to the Business and Professions Code, or a person who is a rehabilitation therapist, or a person who possesses a valid and unrevoked teaching credential which authorizes specialist instruction in special education in grades kindergarten through 12 or in the community college, or a person who has had at least five years of experience teaching the developmentally disabled. The clinical director for any state hospital shall be well qualified by training or experience to have proven skills in mental hospital program administration.

The hospital director shall be either the hospital administrator or the clinical director. He shall be selected based on his overall knowledge of the hospital, its programs, and its relationship to its community, and on his demonstrated abilities to administer a large facility.

The standards for the professional qualifications of a program director shall be established by the Director of Developmental Services for each patient program. The director shall not adopt any regulations which prohibit a licensed psychiatrist, psychologist, psychiatric technician, or clinical social worker from employment in a patient program in any professional, administrative, or technical position; provided, however, that the program director of a medical-surgical unit shall be a licensed physician.

If the program director is not a physician, a physician shall be available to assume responsibility for all those acts of diagnosis, treatment, or prescribing or ordering of drugs which may only be performed by a licensed physician.

A medical program director for a state hospital for the developmentally disabled shall be a physician who has passed, or shall pass, an examination for a license to practice medicine in California and who shall be a qualified specialist in a branch of medicine which includes diseases affecting the brain and nervous system, and the care, treatment, and habilitation of the developmentally disabled.

(Amended by Stats. 1978, Ch. 100.)