No. HB 349
Filed under Healthcare.
Cardiac Service Providers; Revises requirements for licensure of Level I & Level II adult cardiovascular programs; requires AHCA to update specified rules as new applicable industry standards & guidelines are published.
Plain English Summary
AI-GENERATEDHospitals seeking a Level I cardiac program license no longer must prove a minimum yearly volume of catheterizations or heart-disease discharges. The only capability-linked requirement left is a written transfer agreement with a Level II hospital.
Specific quality thresholds for nursing and technical staff experience -- a minimum lab volume, success rate, and complication rate -- are deleted outright, with no replacement standard put in their place.
Level II licensing keeps its high-volume standard -- 1,100 catheterizations and 800 qualifying discharges a year. Both program levels must now also follow guidelines from two more national cardiology associations.
AHCA must now keep its cardiac-program rules updated as new industry standards and guidelines come out, rather than simply having discretion to adopt rules administering the licensing law.
AIA hospital seeking Level I licensure no longer has to show a minimum yearly count of diagnostic catheterizations or ischemic heart disease patients. That volume threshold, previously a core qualifying test, is deleted with no numeric replacement.
AIThe requirement that nursing and technical staff show demonstrated experience handling acutely ill cardiac patients, judged against specific lab-quality benchmarks, is struck outright with nothing put in its place.
AIThe agency's rulemaking for these programs shifts from purely discretionary to an ongoing mandatory duty: it must update its rules every time new applicable industry standards or guidelines are published.
AILevel I and Level II hospitals must now also comply with the most recent guidelines of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, and, if they provide electrophysiology, the Heart Rhythm Society, alongside the two associations already required.
AIRather than instructing the agency to write rules that permit a two-level licensing structure, the law now has the agency grant licensure for those levels directly, making the tiers self-executing in statute.