Report 2019-120 Recommendation 1 Responses

Report 2019-120: Board of Registered Nursing: It Has Failed to Use Sufficient Information When Considering Enrollment Decisions for New and Existing Nursing Programs (Release Date: July 2020)

Recommendation #1 To: Registered Nursing, Board of

To better ensure that California has an appropriate number of nurses in the future, BRN should do the following by January 1, 2021: revise the scope of work of its contract for workforce forecasting services to direct the contractor to incorporate regional analyses.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2021

A new contract with UCSF was executed and the scope of work included a contract deliverable for regional analyses.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Fully Implemented

We have reviewed the revised scope of work of its contract for registered nurse (RN) surveys and forecasts. We found that it includes it includes a task of developing regional projections of future supply and demand of RNs, summarizing that information in a report, and comparing those supply and demand projections with projections published by other organizations.

1-Year Agency Response

The BRN drafted the scope of work for a proposed contract with UCSF. The scope of work includes regional analyses as a contract deliverable. The proposed contract is awaiting required approvals from, including but not limited to, the Office of State Printing and Department of General Services. The proposed contract has a start date of July 1, 2021.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Pending

6-Month Agency Response

The BRN will include in all future workforce forecasting contracts regional analyses as a contract deliverable. The BRN anticipates beginning the contract process for the next contract delivering forecasting services in January 2021.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

60-Day Agency Response

The BRN appreciates and concurs with the CSA's substantive recommendation to revise the contract's scope of work. However, as stated in the original response, BRN has a current contract for workforce forecasting services in place with an end date of June 30, 2021, and work has already been performed for this contract period. The BRN will ensure that all future contracts will include regional analyses as a contract deliverable.

The 2019 "Forecasts of the Registered Nurse Workforce in California" report has been completed and is posted to the BRN website. Through the data collection efforts for this report, UCSF collected regional information which is relied upon by the BRN and the Board when making decisions regarding pre-licensure nursing school programs. BRN also worked with UCSF to launch the BRN School Survey Interactive Data Portal. This portal was launched on August 21, 2020, and displays data about nursing school programs and their students and faculty, and assigns them into ten regions. Finally, DCA's website contains an Open Data Portal which shows licensing statistics by county as well as an interactive map which displays the distribution of DCA's active licensee population across all 58 California counties. The map also shows the annual change in the active licensee population from year to year for each of these counties. Through these aforementioned tools regional information is publicly available on its website and relied upon the Board.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

All Recommendations in 2019-120

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.