Health-Care Practitioner Identification Requirements

The bill creates the "Know Your Health-Care Practitioner Act" (act), requiring a health-care practitioner (practitioner) practicing in a health-care profession or occupation specified in the "Michael Skolnik Medical Transparency Act of 2010" to:

• In advertising health-care services using the practitioner's name, identify the type of state-issued license, certificate, or registration held by the practitioner and ensure that the advertisement is free from deceptive or misleading information;
• For practitioners providing services in a general hospital, urgent care center, ambulatory surgical center, or freestanding emergency department, affirmatively display the practitioner's specific state-issued license, certificate, or registration, without the use of abbreviations, on an identification name tag; and
• When establishing a practitioner-patient relationship, and as necessary to facilitate patient understanding, unless emergent circumstances make it impracticable, verbally communicate to the patient the practitioner's specific state-issued license, certificate, or registration or verbally identify themselves by a title or abbreviation authorized in statute.

A practitioner practicing at a facility that follows the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations standards, and who is in compliance with a facility policy that requires wearing visible identification containing the practitioner's license, certificate, or registration or those of an alternative accrediting organization with substantially similar standards, satisfies the requirement to use an identification name tag.

The act allows a practitioner to conceal or omit the practitioner's name in certain circumstances relating to the practitioner's safety.

The act does not apply to a practitioner who works in a non-patient-care setting or who does not have any direct patient care interactions or when clinically not feasible.

A violation of the act does not create a private right of action.

(Note: Italicized words indicate new material added to the original summary; dashes through words indicate deletions from the original summary.)

(Note: This summary applies to the reengrossed version of this bill as introduced in the second house.)