Section 3500.

In its concern with the growing shortage and geographic maldistribution of health care services in California, the Legislature intends to establish in this chapter a framework for development of a new category of health manpower—the physician assistant.

The purpose of this chapter is to encourage the more effective utilization of the skills of physicians, and physicians and podiatrists practicing in the same medical group practice, by enabling them to delegate health care tasks to qualified physician assistants where this delegation is consistent with the patient's health and welfare and with the laws and regulations relating to physician assistants.

This chapter is established to encourage the utilization of physician assistants by physicians, and by physicians and podiatrists practicing in the same medical group, and to provide that existing legal constraints should not be an unnecessary hindrance to the more effective provision of health care services. It is also the purpose of this chapter to allow for innovative development of programs for the education, training, and utilization of physician assistants.

(Amended by Stats. 1996, Ch. 454, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 1997.)