Opinion ID: 1226541
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: ) Health Facilities.

Text: Focusing on the last sentence of section 5120, which permits health facilities where hospitals or nursing homes are allowed, City contends that the Mansel operation is not a health facility and therefore is not exempt from its zoning regulation. City points to section 1250 of the Health and Safety Code which, for purposes of chapter 2 of division 2 of that code, defines health facility as any facility, place or building which is organized, maintained, and operated for the diagnosis, care, prevention, and treatment of human illness, physical or mental, including convalescence and rehabilitation ... for one or more persons, to which such persons are admitted for a 24-hour stay or longer.... The definition includes: General acute care hospital, acute psychiatric hospital, skilled nursing facility, intermediate care facility, small intermediate care facility/developmentally disabled habilitative, special hospital, and general acute care/rehabilitation hospital. City insists that the Mansel facility fits none of the foregoing institutional descriptions but, rather, is a community care facility defined under section 1502 of the Health and Safety Code, as opposed to a health facility, thereby rendering section 5120 wholly inapplicable. We are led to a contrary conclusion by examining the antecedents of section 1250. When section 5120 was enacted, the California Administrative Code recited that health facility included any hospital, nursing home or intermediate care facility as defined in Sections 230, 231 and 382 and subject to licensure under the provisions of Section 1400 of the Health and Safety Code. (Former Cal. Admin. Code, tit. 17, § 229, repealed June 13, 1975 (Reg. 75, No. 24).) These sections defined the three terms hospital, nursing home and intermediate care facility. Section 1401, the predecessor of present section 1250, described a hospital subject to licensure under section 1400 as any institution ... which maintains and operates organized facilities for one or more persons for the diagnosis, care and treatment of human illness, including convalescence ..., or which maintains and operates organized facilities for any such purpose, and to which persons may be admitted for overnight stay or longer. `Hospital' includes sanatorium, nursing home, and maternity home. When section 1401 was repealed the foregoing hospital definition was transferred to the new Health and Safety Code section 1250, subdivision (b). (Stats. 1972, ch. 1148, § 3, p. 2226.) Not until 1973, when a new version of section 1250 was enacted, did the section include the term health facility. (Stats. 1973, ch. 1202, § 2, p. 2564.) It is unclear which definition of health facility the Legislature favored when it included the term by amendment to section 5120. At the time, there was broad language in section 1401 of Health and Safety Code and the relevant sections appearing in the Administrative Code. The latter expressly contemplated residential treatment facilities which provided less intensive medical care than that furnished in facilities which are deemed health facilities under the current provisions of section 1250 of the Health and Safety Code. For example, a health facility insofar as it was an intermediate care facility was defined as one which provides supportive, restorative, and preventive health services in conjunction with a socially oriented program ..., and which ... operates 24-hour services including board, room, personal care and intermittent nursing care. (Cal. Admin. Code, tit. 17, former § 382.) Nor do we find guidance in the extended definition of health facility contained in section 436.2 of the Health and Safety Code (a part of the Health Facility Construction Loan Insurance Law (Health & Saf. Code, § 436 et seq.)). This section continuously and explicitly has provided that the definitions therein contained govern the construction of the loan insurance law. They do not purport to affect provisions of the Welfare and Institutions Code. Finally, in support of its argument that the Mansel operation is other than a health facility within the meaning of section 5120, City argues that section 1500 et seq. of the Health and Safety Code which established the California Community Care Facilities Act incorporates the definition of health facility contained in section 1250. (Stats. 1973, ch. 1203, § 4, p. 2581.) City purports to find a significant distinction between health facilities so defined and community care facilities. (See Health & Saf. Code, § 1505, subd. (a).) The argument lacks persuasive force in our consideration of the meaning of health facilities as used in section 5120, because section 5120 was adopted before section 1505. From all of the foregoing, we conclude that the Legislature contemplated a broad definition of health facilities when it enacted and subsequently amended section 5120. The facility in question may fairly be deemed a health facility. Such an interpretation is most consistent with the legislative intent favoring local, rather than state, institutional care of mental patients. This intent is clearly manifest in sections 5115, 5116 and 5120. As a consequence, city may only regulate the TLC facility subject to the constraints on zoning regulations imposed by section 5120.