New Standing Orders Law Will Raise
Vaccination Rates Among Elderly
[Posted 08/04/05]

Governor Schwarzenegger last month signed a CMA-sponsored law legalizing the use of standing orders for immunization in the state’s nursing facilities. Under the new law (AB 1711), nurses and pharmacists can administer vaccinations to residents 50 years or older, according to an institution- or physician-approved protocol—without a doctor having to examine and write a prescription for each patient. Multiple research studies have shown standing orders to be highly effective in increasing flu and pneumonia immunization rates in nursing facilities and hospitals.

In 2000, according to the California Department of Health Services (DHS), 8,814 older Californians died from vaccine-preventable flu or pneumonia, making those diseases the sixth leading cause of death for adults in the state.

“Standing orders enable us to protect the state’s most vulnerable citizens. They give doctors and allied health professionals the ability to save lives that in the past were unnecessarily lost to flu or pneumonia,” said Ronald Bangasser, M.D., past president of CMA and chair of the California Adult Immunization Coalition, a statewide partnership of more than 35 health care organizations. “The law extends immunization protections to thousands of older Californians with no downside risk.”

Click here to read the full text of the this bill. For more information on other bills of interest to physicians, see CMA's weekly Legislative Hot List.

Contact: Robin Flagg, 415/882-5110 or rflagg@cmanet.org.