25-277 Physicians Can Now Supervise Up to Eight Physician Assistants When Criteria Are Met
Date: 03/31/25
Based on PAs solely performing certain in-home health evaluations
As of January 1, Assembly Bill (AB) 1070 creates an exception to the existing law that limits the number of physician assistants that a physician or surgeon may supervise at any one time, which is usually no more than four.
This new exception to California’s usual supervision requirements applies only if all physician assistants supervised are limited to performing health evaluations like Medicare annual wellness visits. Also, that the physician assistant’s work does not involve direct patient treatment or prescribing medication.
AB 1070 requirements
1. A physician and surgeon may supervise up to eight physician assistants at one time, if the following conditions are met:
- The physician assistants are focused solely on performing in-home health evaluations.
- The physician assistants are performing in-home health evaluations solely for the purpose of:
- Gathering patient information.
- Performing an annual wellness visit or health evaluation, if it does not involve direct patient treatment or prescribing medication.
2. A physician assistant who performs in-home health evaluation must:
- Remain subject to all supervisory and scope requirements.
- Shall provide all information related to their evaluation to the supervising physician or surgeon.
AB 1070 definition of home evaluations and wellness visits
- In-home health evaluation: A comprehensive physical exam, assessment of current and prior health conditions, a complete medication review, screening tests, health education, and assessment of social determination of health needs to be used for diagnosing individual medical conditions.
- Annual wellness visit: A preventive visit with correlating current procedural terminology codes performed annually to a patient, to be used for the purposes of diagnosing patient conditions during the annual wellness visit, which may include a nonphysical examination for patients covered by Medicare Part B for more than 12 months.
Adding a practitioner to your network
For practitioner add requests submitted to Health Net, please include the phrase "In-home health visit only" within your communication. This helps to differentiate physician assistants requests that are specifically for in home health evaluations.
Additional information
If you have questions regarding the information contained in this update, contact the Health Net Provider Services Center by email, by telephone or through the Health Net provider portal.
Provider Services
Line of business | Phone number | |
|---|---|---|
Ambetter from Health Net IFP Ambetter PPO | ||
Ambetter HMO | ||
Health Net Employer Group HMO, POS, & PPO | ||
Medicare (Individual & Employer Group) (Wellcare By Health Net) | ||
Medicare Supplement | ||
Medi-Cal (including CS and ECM providers) | N/A |
This information applies to Physicians, Participating Physician Groups (PPGs), Hospitals, Ancillary Providers, Community Supports (CS) Providers, and Enhanced Care Management (ECM) Providers.
For Medi-Cal, this information applies to Amador, Calaveras, Inyo, Los Angeles, Molina, Mono, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare and Tuolumne counties.