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Health & Saf. Code, § 1262.6 · Article 1. General

Health & Saf. Code, § 1262.6

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

(a) Each hospital shall provide each patient, upon admission or as soon thereafter as reasonably practical, written information regarding the patient’s right to the following:

(1) To be informed of continuing health care requirements following discharge from the hospital.

(2) To be informed that, if the patient so authorizes, that a friend or family member may be provided information about the patient’s continuing health care requirements following discharge from the hospital.

(3) Participate actively in decisions regarding medical care. To the extent permitted by law, participation shall include the right to refuse treatment.

(4) Appropriate pain assessment and treatment consistent with Sections 124960 and 124961.

(5) To be free of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, citizenship, primary language, or immigration status as set forth in Section 51 of the Civil Code.

(6) Information on how to file a complaint with the following:

(A) The State Department of Public Health, in accordance with Section 1288.4.

(B) The Civil Rights Department.

(C) The Medical Board of California.

(b) A hospital may include the information required by this section with other notices to the patient regarding patient rights. If a hospital chooses to include this information along with existing notices to the patient regarding patient rights, any newly required information shall be provided when the hospital exhausts its existing inventory of written materials and prints new written materials.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Amended by Stats. 2022, Ch. 48, Sec. 55. (SB 189) Effective June 30, 2022.

Source of truth

Edition
As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=HSC&sectionNum=1262.6.
Text hash
sha256 254c89f01a6ca9aaf77da0f903b94b4e08649c57b009644780312b0a16f7d856
Composed by
compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

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