By: Moody, Price, Canales (Senate Sponsor - Hughes) H.B. No. 2362
(In the Senate - Received from the House May 8, 2019;
May 14, 2019, read first time and referred to Committee on State
Affairs; May 19, 2019, reported favorably by the following vote:
Yeas 9, Nays 0; May 19, 2019, sent to printer.)
Click here to see the committee vote
A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT
relating to the standard of proof in health care liability claims
involving emergency medical care.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
SECTION 1. Section 74.153, Civil Practice and Remedies
Code, is amended to read as follows:
Sec. 74.153. STANDARD OF PROOF IN CASES INVOLVING EMERGENCY
MEDICAL CARE. (a) Except as provided by Subsection (b), in [In] a
suit involving a health care liability claim against a physician or
health care provider for injury to or death of a patient arising out
of the provision of emergency medical care in a hospital emergency
department, in an [or] obstetrical unit, or in a surgical suite
immediately following the evaluation or treatment of a patient in a
hospital emergency department, the claimant bringing the suit may
prove that the treatment or lack of treatment by the physician or
health care provider departed from accepted standards of medical
care or health care only if the claimant shows by a preponderance of
the evidence that the physician or health care provider, with
willful [wilful] and wanton negligence, deviated from the degree of
care and skill that is reasonably expected of an ordinarily prudent
physician or health care provider in the same or similar
circumstances.
(b) Subsection (a) does not apply to:
(1) medical care or treatment:
(A) provided after the patient is:
(i) stabilized; and
(ii) receiving medical care or treatment as
a nonemergency patient; or
(B) that is unrelated to a medical emergency; or
(2) a physician or health care provider whose
negligent act or omission proximately causes a stable patient to
require emergency medical care.
SECTION 2. Section 74.153, Civil Practice and Remedies
Code, as amended by this Act, applies only to an action commenced on
or after the effective date of this Act. An action commenced before
the effective date of this Act is governed by the law applicable to
the action immediately before the effective date of this Act, and
that law is continued in effect for that purpose.
SECTION 3. This Act takes effect September 1, 2019.
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