By:  Moncrief                                          S.B. No. 513
                                 A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
                                        AN ACT
    1-1  relating to the requirement that a facility accepting a prospective
    1-2  voluntary inpatient mental health consumer for treatment have a
    1-3  physician's signed order.
    1-4        BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
    1-5        SECTION 1.  Subsection (f), Section 572.0025, Health and
    1-6  Safety Code, is amended to read as follows:
    1-7        (f)  A prospective voluntary patient may not be formally
    1-8  accepted for treatment in a facility unless:
    1-9              (1)  the facility has a physician's <signed> order
   1-10  admitting the prospective patient, which order may be issued
   1-11  orally, electronically, or in writing, signed by the physician,
   1-12  provided that, in the case of an oral order or an electronically
   1-13  transmitted unsigned order, a signed original is presented to the
   1-14  mental health facility within 24 hours of the initial order; the
   1-15  order must be from:
   1-16                    (A)  an admitting physician who has conducted an
   1-17  in-person physical and psychiatric examination within 72 hours of
   1-18  the admission; or
   1-19                    (B)  an admitting physician who has consulted
   1-20  with a physician who has conducted an in-person examination within
   1-21  72 hours of the admission; and
   1-22              (2)  the facility administrator or a person designated
   1-23  by the administrator has agreed to accept the prospective patient
    2-1  and has signed a statement to that effect.
    2-2        SECTION 2.  The importance of this legislation and the
    2-3  crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
    2-4  emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
    2-5  constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
    2-6  days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended,
    2-7  and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its
    2-8  passage, and it is so enacted.