Income Tax – Individual Itemized Deductions – Alterations
HB0926 amends Maryland’s health care malpractice claims law by expanding the statutory definition of “health care provider.” Under current law, the term already includes a range of licensed practitioners and certain facilities; this bill adds an employee, agent, or contractor of a hospital if that person is licensed, certified, registered, or otherwise authorized to render health care services in Maryland. The bill does not create a new cause of action or change malpractice standards directly, but it broadens who is covered by the subtitle governing health care malpractice claims.
In practical terms, the bill would extend the protections and procedural framework of Maryland’s health care malpractice system to additional hospital-affiliated personnel, potentially affecting how claims are filed, defended, and processed when the alleged negligence involves those individuals. It would also align the statute more closely with modern hospital staffing arrangements, where care may be delivered by a mix of employees, agents, and contractors rather than only traditional direct providers. The bill takes effect October 1, 2025.
The bill amends Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article § 3-2A-01(f) to include certain hospital employees, agents, and contractors within the definition of “health care provider” for purposes of Maryland’s health care malpractice claims subtitle. This change affects the scope of parties covered by malpractice claim procedures and related legal protections, potentially influencing pre-suit requirements, arbitration or administrative processes where applicable, and liability treatment for hospital-based care providers. It does not alter the exclusion for spiritual-treatment nursing institutions.
There is limited recorded committee or floor discussion in the provided materials, and no vote history is available. Based on the bill text, the measure appears technical and clarifying rather than controversial, with an apparent purpose of updating malpractice law to reflect hospital staffing realities. The absence of recorded opposition or amendments suggests the bill was presented as a narrow definitional change.
No specific points of contention are documented in the provided transcripts or voting history. The main policy issue implied by the bill is whether expanding the definition of “health care provider” should extend malpractice-law coverage to a broader set of hospital-affiliated workers, including contractors and agents. Potentially affected parties include hospitals, hospital-employed clinicians, contracted practitioners, malpractice claimants, and insurers, but no explicit objections or support statements are available in the record provided.