California Business and Professions Code 3516 – (a) Notwithstanding any other law, a physician assistant …
(a) Notwithstanding any other law, a physician assistant licensed by the board shall be eligible for employment or supervision by a physician and surgeon who is not subject to a disciplinary condition imposed by the Medical Board of California prohibiting that employment or supervision.
(b) (1) Except as provided in paragraph (2) and in Section 3502.5, a physician and surgeon shall not supervise more than four physician assistants at any one time.
Terms Used In California Business and Professions Code 3516
- Board: means the Physician Assistant Board. See California Business and Professions Code 3501
- supervising physician and surgeon: means a physician and surgeon licensed by the Medical Board of California or by the Osteopathic Medical Board of California who supervises one or more physician assistants, who possesses a current valid license to practice medicine, and who is not currently on disciplinary probation prohibiting the employment or supervision of a physician assistant. See California Business and Professions Code 3501
- Supervision: means that a licensed physician and surgeon oversees the activities of, and accepts responsibility for, the medical services rendered by a physician assistant. See California Business and Professions Code 3501
(2) Notwithstanding paragraph (1), a physician and surgeon may supervise up to, but no more than, eight physician assistants at one time, but only if the following conditions are satisfied by all supervised physician assistants:
(A) The physician assistants are focused solely on performing in home health evaluations.
(B) The physician assistants are performing in home health evaluations solely for the following purposes:
(i) Gathering patient information.
(ii) Performing an annual wellness visit or health evaluation, if it does not involve direct patient treatment or prescribing medication.
(3) A physician assistant who performs an in home health evaluation for the purposes specified in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (2) remains subject to all supervisory and scope requirements pursuant to this chapter and shall provide the supervising physician and surgeon with all information related to their evaluation under subparagraphs (A) and (B) of paragraph (2).
(c) The Medical Board of California may restrict a physician and surgeon to supervising specific types of physician assistants including, but not limited to, restricting a physician and surgeon from supervising physician assistants outside of the field of specialty of the physician and surgeon.
(d) For purposes of this section:
(1) “In home health evaluation” means a comprehensive physical exam, assessment of current and prior health conditions, a complete medication review, screening tests, health education, and assessment of social determination of health needs to be used for diagnosing individual medical conditions.
(2) “Annual wellness visit” means a preventive visit with correlating current procedural terminology codes performed annually to a patient, to be used for the purposes of diagnosing patient conditions during the annual wellness visit, which may include a nonphysical examination for patients covered by Medicare Part B for more than 12 months.
(Amended by Stats. 2023, Ch. 827, Sec. 1. (AB 1070) Effective January 1, 2024.)