An act to add Sections 1256.05 and 1256.06 to the Health and Safety Code, relating to perinatal health care.
SB 669 creates a 10-year pilot project authorizing up to five California critical access hospitals to provide “standby perinatal services” for urgent or emergent obstetric and neonatal care. The bill directs the State Department of Public Health to establish the pilot by July 1, 2026, and specifies that the first two participating hospitals, if qualified, must be nonprofit facilities in Humboldt County and Plumas County. The pilot is intended to address the loss of rural maternity services and the long travel times many pregnant patients face to reach open labor and delivery units.
The bill defines standby perinatal services as a designated hospital area that can receive transferred patients or obstetric emergencies and provide physician, midwifery, and nursing services within 30 minutes. It also requires the department to set selection criteria, consult with stakeholders, collect data on safety, outcomes, utilization, and populations served, and submit a public evaluation to the Legislature after the pilot ends. Hospitals in the pilot may request program flexibility, but they remain subject to licensing enforcement and may have approval suspended or revoked for noncompliance or safety failures.
SB 669 adds Sections 1256.05 and 1256.06 to the Health and Safety Code, creating a new regulatory framework for a limited rural maternity-care model within critical access hospitals. It imposes detailed operational, staffing, equipment, transfer, training, and quality-improvement requirements on participating hospitals, including surgical and anesthesia capability, neonatal resuscitation, blood transfusion capacity, 24-hour coverage expectations, and quarterly reporting to the department. Because violations can be treated as crimes under existing licensing law, the bill also creates a state-mandated local program, though it states no reimbursement is required. The bill specifically targets Humboldt and Plumas counties as the first sites and makes legislative findings supporting a special statute for those counties.
The bill appears to have been broadly supported throughout the legislative process. Committee and floor votes were unanimous or near-unanimous, with repeated “do pass” recommendations and no recorded opposition in the provided vote history. The special-consent and suspense-file actions suggest the bill was treated as significant but ultimately noncontroversial, likely because it addresses rural access to maternity care and uses a pilot-project structure rather than a statewide mandate.
The main policy tension in SB 669 is between expanding access to rural perinatal care and ensuring patient safety and workforce stability. Support for the bill is reflected in its detailed clinical standards, transfer requirements, and data-reporting obligations, which are designed to limit risk in small hospitals. Potential concerns include whether critical access hospitals can realistically meet the staffing and equipment requirements, whether the model could affect existing hospital workforce arrangements, and whether a special statute focused on Humboldt and Plumas counties is appropriate. The bill addresses some of these issues by requiring stakeholder consultation, allowing program flexibility, and conditioning additional pilot sites on workforce agreements or attestations.