BILL ANALYSIS

C.S.H.B. 297

By: Murr

Public Health

Committee Report (Substituted)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

More than two decades ago the legislature enacted legislation requiring 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 has been noted that this training requirement is costly in employee time and the information contained in the training does not change significantly enough year-to-year to warrant a complete retraining annually. C.S.H.B. 297 seeks to address this issue by reducing the continuing inservice training from eight hours to four hours while retaining the eight hours of training for new employees.

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. 297 amends the Health and Safety Code to replace 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 eight hours of inservice training on identifying patient abuse or neglect and illegal, unprofessional, or unethical conduct by or in the facility with a requirement for each such facility to provide eight hours of that training initially for new employees and four hours annually thereafter as continuing inservice training for continuing employees.

EFFECTIVE DATE

September 1, 2021.

COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE

While C.S.H.B. 297 may differ from the original in minor or nonsubstantive ways, the following summarizes the substantial differences between the introduced and committee substitute versions of the bill.

The original reduced the total number of inservice training hours that each applicable facility or hospital must provide to employees and health care professionals associated with the facility on an annual basis from eight to four. The substitute instead retains the eight-hour training requirement for new employees and makes the reduced four-hour annual training requirement applicable only to continuing employees.