A. The legislature finds that:

(1) acute care general hospitals throughout New Mexico operate emergency departments and provide vital emergency medical services to patients requiring immediate medical care; and

(2) federal and state laws require hospitals that operate an emergency department to provide certain emergency services and care to any person, regardless of that person's ability to pay. Accordingly, these hospitals encounter significant financial losses when treating uninsured or underinsured patients.

B. As used in this section:

(1) "limited service hospital" means a hospital that limits admissions according to medical or surgical specialty, type of disease or medical condition, or a hospital that limits its inpatient hospital services to surgical services or invasive diagnostic and treatment procedures; provided, however, that a "limited service hospital" does not include:

(a) a hospital licensed by the department as a special hospital;

(b) an eleemosynary hospital that does not bill patients for services provided; or

(c) a hospital that has been granted a license prior to January 1, 2003;

(2) "department" means the department of health; and

(3) "low-income patient" means a patient whose family or household income does not exceed two hundred percent of the federal poverty level.

C. The department shall issue a license to an acute-care or general hospital or a limited services hospital that agrees to:

(1) continuously maintain and operate an emergency department that provides emergency medical services as determined by the department;

(2) participate in the medicaid, medicare and county indigent care programs;

(3) require a physician owner to disclose a financial interest in the hospital before referring a patient to the hospital;

(4) comply with the same quality standards applied to other hospitals;

(5) provide emergency services and general health care to nonpaying patients and low-income reimbursed patients in the same proportion as the patients are treated in acute-care general hospitals in the local community, as determined by the department in consultation with a statewide hospital organization, the government of the county in which the facilities are located and the affected hospitals; provided that:

(a) a hospital may appeal the determination of the department pursuant to Section 39-3-1.1 NMSA 1978; and

(b) the annual cost of the care required to be provided pursuant to this paragraph shall not exceed an amount equal to five percent of the hospital's annual revenue; and

(6) require a health care provider to disclose a financial interest before referring a patient to the hospital.

History: Laws 2003, ch. 426, § 1.

Emergency clauses. — Laws 2003, ch. 426, § 2 contained an emergency clause and was approved April 8, 2003.