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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