Patient Rights Statement
You have the right to receive the health care you need without concern for age, race, color, beliefs, nationality, disability, gender, or sexual orientation. Information regarding your rights as a patient must be provided to you or your designated representative in advance of giving or stopping care.
You have the right to receive the visitors you designate, including, but not limited to, a spouse, a domestic partner (including same-sex domestic partner), another family member, or a friend. You may withdraw or deny such consent at any time. Visitations may be limited when clinically necessary or when it is reasonable to restrict visitation.
Specific Patient Rights
As a patient, you have the right to:
- Have a Medical Screening exam and stabilization even if you cannot pay for it.
- Have the services of an interpreter arranged for you at no cost to you.
- Have information provided to you if you have vision, speech, hearing, or cognitive impairments, to meet your specific needs.
- Ask that a family member or friend and a health care provider of your choice be notified if you are kept overnight in the hospital.
- Have family or a chosen representative participate in discussions of treatment options.
- Have your cultural, psychosocial, spiritual and personal values and beliefs respected.
- Be treated with courtesy and respect in a way that respects privacy and dignity.
- Get care in a safe setting that is free of mental, physical, sexual and verbal abuse and neglect and exploitation.
- Know who is on the team providing your healthcare.
- Be involved in making decisions about your treatment and care.
- Refuse care, treatment, procedures, or services in accordance with the law and regulations.
- Be asked about your pain and to have your pain managed appropriately.
- Be free from being tied down, given sedation medicine or put into a room alone to control behavior problems except in emergencies. These methods are allowed only to keep someone safe if all other available methods have failed.
- Information about what is thought to be wrong with you, what treatment you can expect, the purpose of any procedure that the provider suggests as well as the outcomes of care, treatment, and services.
- Receive teaching about self-care at home.
- Make decisions about the care you want if ever you should be near death or not able to speak for yourself. This includes writing advance directives asking to be kept alive or asking not to be given life-prolonging treatments.
- Receive adequate information related to research, investigation and clinical trials for which you may be eligible.
- Receive a full explanation of the insurance coverage, services, and treatments that are provided.
- Receive a full explanation of your bill.
- Have access to protective or advocacy services, through Child Protective Services or Adult Protective Services
- Appeal your discharge if you feel its premature
- Express your concerns/complaints without fear of reprisal, and have them responded to in a timely manner
- Have a family member, friend, or other individual present with you for emotional support during the course of your stay.
With regard to your medical records and health information, you have the right to:
- Inspect and obtain a copy of your medical records in a reasonable amount of time
- Request an amendment to your health information if you think it is incomplete or incorrect
- Obtain a copy of the Lovelace Health System Joint Notice of Privacy Practices upon request
- The right to confidentiality and to information about how and/or when Lovelace Health System may use or share your health information
- Receive an accounting (a list) of the disclosures Lovelace Health System has made of your health information in the past six years
- Request a restriction on certain uses and disclosures of your health information
- Request a confidential communication of your health information by alternate means or at alternate locations