Prohibits any personnel, in any healthcare facility, from asking the legal immigration status of any patient.
H6244 amends Rhode Island’s patient-rights statute for licensed healthcare facilities. While the bill’s stated focus is narrow, it adds a new patient protection prohibiting healthcare facilities from asking a patient about immigration status or requiring proof of lawful presence in the United States. The measure is placed within a broader list of patient rights that already covers respectful care, privacy, informed transfer, billing transparency, nondiscrimination, access to records, pain assessment, and hospice information.
The bill also preserves and reinforces several existing patient-rights provisions. It requires facilities to provide summarized medical bills within 30 days of discharge, itemized bills on request, and free copies of records in certain benefit-claim situations involving Social Security, workers’ compensation, or veterans’ benefits. It keeps in place protections against discrimination based on age, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, disability, religion, national origin, source of income, source of payment, or profession, and it maintains rules on privacy, informed consent for research, and access to facility rules and regulations. The act takes effect upon passage.
The bill directly amends section 23-17-19.1 of the Rhode Island General Laws governing the rights of patients in licensed healthcare facilities. Its principal legal effect is to bar healthcare facilities and their personnel from asking about a patient’s immigration status or demanding proof of legal presence, thereby adding a specific nondiscrimination/privacy protection to the state’s healthcare licensing framework. Because the change is embedded in the licensing statute, it applies to facilities regulated under chapter 23-17 and becomes enforceable as part of the standards those facilities must observe.
The available voting history indicates strong support for the bill, with passage in the House by 69-3 and in the Senate by 32-3. That margin suggests broad bipartisan agreement on the underlying patient-protection goal. No committee transcript is available, but the recorded votes imply that most legislators viewed the measure as a modest extension of existing patient-rights and nondiscrimination protections rather than a major policy shift.
The only apparent point of contention is the immigration-status provision itself. Supporters appear to have favored preventing healthcare settings from deterring patients from seeking care or intruding on privacy, while the small minority of dissenting votes suggests some concern about the scope of the restriction or its policy implications. Because no committee debate transcript is provided, the specific arguments on either side are not documented in the record supplied here.