Patient Rights and Responsibilities

You have the right to:

  1. Considerate and respectful care, and to be made comfortable. You have the right to respect for your cultural, psychosocial, spiritual, and personal values, beliefs and preferences.
  2. Have a family member (or other representative of your choosing) and your own
physician notified promptly of your admission to the surgery center.
  3. Know the name of the licensed health care practitioner acting within the scope
of his or her professional licensure who has primary responsibility for
coordinating your care, and the names and professional relationships of
physicians and non-physicians who will see you.
  4. Receive information about your health status, diagnosis, prognosis, course of
treatment, prospects for recovery and outcomes of care (including
unanticipated outcomes) in terms you can understand. You have the right to
effective communication and to participate in the development and
implementation of your plan of care. You have the right to participate in ethical
questions that arise in the course of your care, including issues of conflict
resolution, withholding resuscitative services, and forgoing or withdrawing
life-sustaining treatment.
  5. Make decisions regarding medical care, and receive as much information
about any proposed treatment or procedure as you may need in order to give
informed consent or to refuse a course of treatment. Except in emergencies,
this information shall include a description of the procedure or treatment, the
medically significant risks involved, alternate courses of treatment or
non-treatment and the risks involved in each, and the name of the person who
will carry out the procedure or treatment.
  6. Request or refuse treatment, to the extent permitted by law. However, you do
not have the right to demand inappropriate or medically unnecessary treatment
or services. You have the right to leave the surgery center even against the
advice of members of the medical staff, to the extent permitted by law.
  7. Be advised if the surgery center/licensed health care practitioner acting within
the scope of his or her professional licensure proposes to engage in or perform
human experimentation affecting your care or treatment. You have the right to
refuse to participate in such research projects.
  8. Reasonable responses to any reasonable requests made for service.
  9. Appropriate assessment and management of your pain, information about
pain, pain relief measures and to participate in pain management decisions.
You may request or reject the use of any or all modalities to relieve pain,
including opiate medication, if you suffer from severe chronic intractable pain.
The doctor may refuse to prescribe the opiate medication, but if so, must
inform you that there are physicians who specialize in the treatment of pain
with methods that include the use of opiates.
  10. Formulate advance directives. This includes designating a decision maker if
you become incapable of understanding a proposed treatment or become
unable to communicate your wishes regarding care. Surgery center staff and
practitioners who provide care in the surgery center shall comply with these
directives. All patients’ rights apply to the person who has legal responsibility
to make decisions regarding medical care on your behalf.
  11. Have personal privacy respected. Case discussion, consultation, examination
and treatment are confidential and should be conducted discreetly. You have
the right to be told the reason for the presence of any individual. You have the
right to have visitors leave prior to an examination and when treatment issues
are being discussed. Privacy curtains will be used in semi-private rooms.
  12. Confidential treatment of all communications and records pertaining to your
care and stay in the surgery center. You will receive a separate “Notice of
Privacy Practices” that explains your privacy rights in detail and how we may
use and disclose your protected health information.
  13. Receive care in a safe setting, free from mental, physical, sexual or verbal
abuse and neglect, exploitation or harassment. You have the right to access
protective and advocacy services including notifying government agencies of
neglect or abuse.
  14. Be free from restraints and seclusion of any form used as a means of coercion,
discipline, convenience or retaliation by staff.
  15. Reasonable continuity of care and to know in advance the time and location of
appointments as well as the identity of the persons providing the care.
  16. Be informed by the physician, or a delegate of the physician, of continuing
health care requirements and options following discharge from the surgery
center. You have the right to be involved in the development and
implementation of your discharge plan. Upon your request, a friend or family
member may be provided this information also.
  17. Know which surgery center rules and policies apply to your conduct while a patient.
  18. Designate a support person as well as visitors of your choosing, if you have
decision-making capacity, whether or not the visitor is related by blood,
marriage, or registered domestic partner status, unless:
    • No visitors are allowed
    • The facility reasonably determines that the presence of a particular visitor
would endanger the health or safety of a patient, a member of the health
facility staff, or other visitor to the health facility, or would significantly
disrupt the operations of the facility.
    • You have told the health facility staff that you no longer want a particular
person to visit.

    However, a health facility may establish reasonable restrictions upon visitation,
including restrictions upon the hours of visitation and number of visitors. The
health facility must inform you (or your support person, where appropriate) of
your visitation rights, including any clinical restrictions or limitations. The health
facility is not permitted to restrict, limit, or otherwise deny visitation privileges
on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual
orientation, or disability.

  19. Have your wishes considered, if you lack decision-making capacity, for the
purposes of determining who may visit. The method of that consideration will
comply with federal law and be disclosed in the surgery center policy on
visitation. At a minimum, the surgery center shall include any persons living in
your household and any support person pursuant to federal law.
  20. Examine and receive an explanation of the surgery center’s bill regardless of
the source of payment.
  21. Exercise these rights without regard to sex, economic status, educational
background, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sexual orientation,
gender identity/expression, disability, medical condition, marital status, age,
registered domestic partner status, genetic information, citizenship, primary
language, immigration status (except as required by federal law) or the source
of payment for care.
  22. File a grievance. If you want to file a grievance with this surgery center, you
may do so by writing or by calling (name, address and phone number of
surgery center):

    Administrator
    Truckee Surgery Center
    10770 Donner Pass Road
    Truckee, CA 96161
    (530) 550-2940

    The grievance committee will review each grievance and provide you with a
written response within days. The written response will contain the name of a
person to contact at the surgery center, the steps taken to investigate the
grievance, the results of the grievance process, and the date of completion of
the grievance process. Concerns regarding quality of care or premature
discharge will also be referred to the appropriate Utilization and Quality
Control Peer Review Organization (PRO).

  23. File a complaint with the California Department of Public Health regardless of
whether you use the surgery center’s grievance process. The California
Department of Public Health’s phone number and address is:

    California Department of Public Health
    126 Mission Ranch Boulevard
    Chico, CA 95926
    Tel: (530) 895-6711
    Toll Free: 1 (855) 804-4205

These Patient Rights combine Title 22 and other California laws, The Joint Commission and Medicare Conditions of Participation requirements. (3/17)


Patient Rights 08/19