Healthcare

Like Senate Bill No. 5, this Act is the first leg of an amendment to the Delaware Constitution to ensure that every Delawarean is afforded reproductive freedom. This Act differs from Senate Bill No. 5 by making the following clarifications: (1) That an individual has a fundamental right to reproductive freedom relating to that individual’s pregnancy. (2) That the standard of medical judgment is a “good-faith medical judgment” rather than a “professional judgment”. (3) That the health care professional making the good-faith medical judgment is the “treating attending health care professional” rather than the “attending health care professional”. Amending the Delaware Constitution requires not only the passing of the changes in this Act, but also passage of the same changes after the next general election by the next General Assembly. This Act requires a greater than majority vote for passage because § 1 of Article XVI of the Delaware Constitution requires the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the members elected to each house of the General Assembly to amend the Delaware Constitution.

This Concurrent Resolution requests the Delaware Department of Education to develop a working group of health educators to continually improve the K-12 Comprehensive Health Education Programming, ensuring skills-based health education is accessible to all children throughout the state. This will require the review of information from parents and families, students, administrators, superintendents, other DE state agencies, and other organizations as needed to inform recommended changes to the Delaware Health Standards that will need to be adopted by the State Board of Education. The Department will provide a summary report of the information reviewed by the working group, summary of the annual health education survey and recommended new Delaware health standards. The summary report will be provided to the Governor, members of the General Assembly, and the State Board of Education, and the Director and the Librarian of the Division of Legislative Services.

The purpose of this Act is to protect medical providers in the State from out-of-state lawsuits and investigations that threaten the practice of medicine in the State. To that end this Act does the following: 1) Clarifies that physicians, physician assistants, and nurses that provide lawful healthcare services in the State do not engage in unprofessional conduct and cannot be disciplined for such services even if such services are illegal or considered to be unprofessional conduct or the unauthorized practice of medicine or nursing in another state. 2) In a civil action or proceeding, prohibits any healthcare provider from disclosing communications and records concerning healthcare services unless the patient authorizes such disclosure, with some exceptions. 3) Provides protections from civil and criminal actions that arise in another state that are based on the provision of health care services that are legal in Delaware. 4) Creates a cause of action for persons against whom a judgment was entered in another state based upon that person allegedly providing, receiving, or helping another person to provide healthcare services that are lawful in Delaware. (This does not apply to an action where no part of the acts that formed the basis for liability occurred in Delaware.) 5) Prohibits an insurer from taking an adverse action against a healthcare provider or organization for performing or providing healthcare services that are lawful in this State. 6) Prohibits any State or local agency, commission, board, or department from assisting a federal law-enforcement agency, another state’s law-enforcement agency, a private citizen, or a quasi-law-enforcement agency in relation to an investigation or inquiry concerning the lawfulness of healthcare services, if such services would be lawful as provided if they occurred entirely in the State.