BILL ANALYSIS

C.S.H.B. 233

By: Murr

Public Health

Committee Report (Substituted)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

State law requires each inpatient mental health facility, treatment facility, or hospital that provides comprehensive medical rehabilitation services to annually provide as a condition of continued licensure a minimum of eight hours of inservice training designed to assist employees and health care professionals associated with the facility in identifying patient abuse or neglect and illegal, unprofessional, or unethical conduct by or in the facility. This training requirement is costly in employee hours each year and the information included in the training does not change significantly enough year to year to warrant annual retraining. C.S.H.B. 233 seeks to allow staff to spend more of their time on patient care and other aspects of providing services while still keeping the importance of patient rights and ethical and professional conduct in the spotlight by reducing the length of the annual refresher training courses to four hours.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE IMPACT

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly create a criminal offense, increase the punishment for an existing criminal offense or category of offenses, or change the eligibility of a person for community supervision, parole, or mandatory supervision.

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.

ANALYSIS

C.S.H.B. 233 amends the Health and Safety Code to make the following changes to the requirement for each inpatient mental health facility, treatment facility, or hospital that provides comprehensive medical rehabilitation services to annually provide, as a condition of continued licensure, a minimum of eight hours of inservice training designed to assist employees and health care professionals associated with the facility in identifying patient abuse or neglect and illegal, unprofessional, or unethical conduct by or in the facility:

· it limits the employees to whom the eight-hour minimum training requirement applies to new employees undergoing their initial inservice training; and

· it reduces to four the minimum number of training hours continuing employees must annually undergo as continuing inservice training.

The bill authorizes this inservice training to be provided either in person or through a live, interactive, instructor-led, and electronic method that uses synchronous audiovisual interaction between the instructor and employees. These changes apply to the minimum number of inservice training hours provided as a condition of licensure on and after the bill's effective date.

EFFECTIVE DATE

September 1, 2023.

COMPARISON OF INTRODUCED AND SUBSTITUTE

While C.S.H.B. 233 may differ from the introduced in minor or nonsubstantive ways, the following summarizes the substantial differences between the introduced and committee substitute versions of the bill.

The substitute includes a provision not in the introduced authorizing the inservice training to be provided either in person or through a qualifying electronic method.