SB 653

This bill creates a right to medically accurate information, creates bodies for

researching reproductive health issues, prohibits certain employment retribution

and discrimination for health care providers, provides methods for health care

providers to assert conscientious beliefs regarding reproductive health care services,

makes various changes to abortion laws, specifies prohibited conduct regarding

obtaining and providing health care and civil remedies and criminal penalties for

committing that conduct, and regulating rates and other aspects of health care

liability insurance.

Patient Rights to Medically Accurate Information

This bill creates a right and obligation for a physician to provide medically

accurate information to patients to whom the physician provides medical care. The

bill also creates a right for a patient to receive medically accurate information from

a physician. The bill prohibits interference or other diminishment of the rights and

obligations relating to medically accurate information, and further prohibits

employment retribution based upon a physician's exercise of the rights and

obligations relating to the provision of medically accurate information.

Under the bill, the state, including any political subdivision or instrumentality

of the state, may not do either of the following: 1) require any information that is not

medically accurate to be included on a procedure or treatment form; or 2) prohibit a

physician from including medically accurate information that or from deleting

information that in the physician's medical judgment is either not medically

accurate or not somehow relevant to the patient's specific request for care or

treatment.

The bill creates an Office of Advancement in Medical Knowledge and Care that

is required to investigate developments affecting patient rights and to submit an

annual report of its findings.

Conscientious Beliefs

The bill requires a hospital that has a department or service offering maternity

care services to permit all standard reproductive health care services and all

maternity care services if the hospital has the capacity and capability. The hospital

must also provide an appropriate medical screening examination to any individual

that comes to the hospital and for which a request for examination, treatment, or care

for any standard reproductive health care service is made.

Under the bill, if a health care provider is available and it is within his or her

training and license to provide or perform care appropriate for a patient's

reproductive health care condition, the hospital must allow that provider to provide

standard reproductive health care services, and reasonably accommodate and

provide sufficient support for that provider in providing the care. If a health care

provider is not available to provide or perform care appropriate for a patient's

reproductive health care condition, and the hospital determines the patient has an