Bill > A1645

Introduced Session

This bill would clarify that apologies by health care facility representatives and health care professionals to patients or their parents or guardians for adverse events subject to patient disclosure under the "Patient Safety Act," P.L.2004, c.9 (C.26:2H-12.23 et seq.), are generally excluded from discovery and inadmissible in legal actions or proceedings involving those facilities and professionals. In accordance with the bill's provisions, any document, gesture, or oral statement to a patient, family member, or guardian associated with the adverse event disclosure expressing benevolence, regret, apology, sympathy, commiseration, condolence, or compassion would not be: subject to discovery or admissible as evidence or otherwise disclosed in any civil, criminal, or administrative action or proceeding; or used in an adverse employment action or in the evaluation of decisions made in relation to accreditation, certification, credentialing, or licensing of the apologizing heath care professional. However, any document, gesture, or oral statement, or part thereof, expressing negligence or fault concerning the adverse event disclosed would be subject to discovery and admissible in any action or proceeding, and could be used by a health care facility to take disciplinary action against a health care professional in a case in which the professional had displayed recklessness, gross negligence or willful misconduct, or in which there was evidence, based on other similar cases known to the facility, of a pattern of significant substandard performance that resulted in serious preventable adverse events.

Committee Categories

Pam Lampitt (D)*, 

Introduced, Referred to Assembly Health Committee (on 01/09/2024)

Official Document