Bills · 2021-2022 Regular Session
Relating to: video recording of surgical procedures, providing an exemption from emergency rule procedures, granting rule-making authority, requiring the exercise of rule-making authority, and providing a penalty. (FE)
Data processing Health services department of — Health Hospitals and health care facilities Legislature — Criminal penalties joint review committee on
- Introduced, stopped here
- Passes Assembly, not reached
- Passes Senate, not reached
- Governor signs, not reached
- Law, not reached
Unfamiliar terms? Glossary
What this bill does
Plain-language analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau
This bill creates a requirement for hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, or
any other places where surgical procedures are performed — referred to in the bill
as surgical facilities — to offer surgical patients the option to have their surgical
procedures and discharge instructions videotaped. Surgical facilities must provide
notice of the option and all related procedures and conditions set forth in the bill. For
purposes of this bill, a surgical procedure is one for which a surgical or other invasive
procedure is performed upon a patient under conscious sedation, deep sedation,
regional anesthesia, or general anesthesia. If a patient makes a request to have a
surgical procedure recorded, this bill requires that the surgical facility, or its
designee, record the surgical procedure with both audio and color video. When
recording of a surgical procedure is requested, the facility must continuously record
with color video and audio all activity in the surgical suite from the time preparation
for the surgery begins until all activity related to the surgery, including cleanup, is
complete. The bill requires that the recording must also include any preoperative
communication regarding the surgical procedure between the surgical practitioner
and the patient and any surgical time out, regardless of where those communications
take place. If the surgical patient is incapacitated, the surgical facility is required
to provide another authorized person with notice of the option for video recording,
and that person may request that a recording be made. Similarly, if the surgical
patient is a minor, the surgical facility must notify a parent, guardian, or legal
custodian of the option for video recording and allow that person to make a request
for a recording on behalf of the minor. A patient may also request that his or her
discharge instructions be recorded. The surgical facility may determine if these
instructions will be videotaped or audiotaped.
The bill also allows a physician or certain other individual who holds a valid
license or other credential that allows him or her to perform surgical procedures and
who is scheduled to perform a surgical patient's surgical procedure to request that
a recording be made. A health care provider who provides the patient with discharge
instructions may also request that those instructions, as provided, be recorded. A
surgical facility must comply with these provider requests so long as certain
conditions are met, including that the surgical patient or other person authorized to
make a decision on behalf of the patient does not object. Under the bill, in certain
limited emergency circumstances, surgical facilities are not required to provide the
option of recording or to comply with a request for recording. If the facility is not
required to comply with a request for recording due to an emergency, the facility must
still provide the patient with the option to have his or her discharge instructions
recorded.
In return for exercising the option to have a surgical procedure recorded, under
the bill, the surgical patient or another person on behalf of the patient may not
disclose the recording except to limited authorized individuals, unless