Last Friday marked the deadline to introduce bills for the 2026 state legislative session. While the focus for this year will be on CHA’s two sponsored bills, there are several concerning pieces of legislation that will demand intensive engagement. (All told, about 1,800 bills have been introduced this year.)

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What’s happening: On Feb. 24, CHA held a virtual briefing to educate legislative staff about artificial intelligence (AI) in health care — including its use, governance, and opportunities in California’s health care delivery system. 

What else to know: More than 50 legislative staff, including staff from the Assembly and Senate Health Committees and the Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection, heard from three CHA member panelists: 

• Matt Eisenberg, MD, associate chief medical information officer, Stanford Health Care 
• Kristine Lee, MD, associate executive director, The Permanente Medical Group 
• Shane Thielman, corporate senior vice president, chief information & digital officer, Scripps Health 

The briefing was interactive with panelists sharing their experiences and perspectives. Attendees heard about how hospitals are using AI to improve care, reduce clinician burnout, enhance patient safety, and identify hospitalized patients at risk of deterioration. All three organizations stressed that AI is assistive, not a replacement for clinicians. Providers must ask patients for consent, review and edit AI-generated notes, remain accountable for final decisions, and rely on strong cybersecurity and HIPAA-aligned safeguards for protected health information (PHI). 

Other key takeaways: 

• Governance is central: hospital systems use multidisciplinary committees, standardized assessments, and AI registries, and cease using underperforming or unsafe models. 
• Models are piloted and tested before being deployed in the clinical setting for all patients. 
• Continuous monitoring — both quantitative (performance metrics) and qualitative (clinician feedback) — is essential to detect model drift, usability issues, and unintended consequences. 
• Workforce training on AI tools, ethics, PHI protection, and limitations is recurring and seen as critical to building trust and “future-ready” skills.   
• All panelists emphasized a “human-in-the-loop” approach, preserving clinician autonomy and judgment while using AI as augmented intelligence to support access, quality, and safety. 

What’s happening: There is still time to register for CHA’s annual Rural Health Care Symposium on March 23-24 at the Kimpton Sawyer in Sacramento. Speakers will explore challenges faced by rural hospitals, and attendees will leave with valuable insights on a range of critical health care topics.  

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What’s happening: Noridian will host three webinars for inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRF) ahead of the May 1 implementation of the IRF Review Choice Demonstration.  

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What’s happening: Donate Life America and Epic have integrated organ, eye, and tissue donor registration directly into the Epic MyChart portal, allowing adult patients to securely record their donation decision.  

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What’s happening: CHA DataSuite has issued a hospital-specific analysis, which is intended to give hospitals a preview of the potential impact of the federal fiscal year (FFY) 2027 Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program.  

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What’s happening: The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has issued a request for information (RFI) on whether to implement a new 340B rebate model pilot program and how it might be designed. Comments were originally due by March 19, but HRSA is extending the deadline to April 20.  

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In the perpetual game of whack-a-mole where the aim is to debunk nasty myths about hospitals that keep popping up just about everywhere you look, yet another mole poked out its head last week in CalMatters. 

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What’s happening: The Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) has opened a 30-day public comment period — ending on March 12 — to solicit feedback on a five-year renewal request of the California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) Section 1115 demonstration.  

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