Seismic Retrofit of California Hospitals: Implementing Regulatory Policy in a Complex and Dynamic Context

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Implementing public policy rarely flows either automatically or smoothly following enactment. This paper is a midstream analysis of a study of the implementation of seismic safety legislation in California aimed at strengthening or eliminating older acute-care hospitals. SB 1953, as it has become known, is legislation requiring that owners of acute-care hospitals built before 1973 strengthen those structures to meet contemporary seismic safety standards. Implementing the Act has been troublesome for both health-care administrators and regulators in large part because of the complex, dynamic, and unpredictable environment within which health-care organizations found themselves in the years following enactment of the policy.