Your Child's Rights and Your Responsibilities

Your Child's Rights

Patients and families have rights and responsibilities based on Childrens Hospital's core values of respect, service, excellence, knowledge, and teamwork.  

Your rights as a patient include the ability to:  

• Receive medical care
• Know the roles of your caregivers
• Obtain health information that you understand
• Maintain control over decision-making
• Incorporate family members in care and receive visitors
• Have respect shown for your wishes
• Have your child's medical information remain private

Below is expanded information on each of these rights.  

Receive Medical Care

Childrens Hospital Los Angeles preserves your rights to:

• Receive considerate and respectful care.
• Be made comfortable.
• Have your own doctor notified of your admission to the hospital.
• Participate in the development and implementation of your care plan. 
• Participate in ethical questions that arise in the course of your care including conflict resolution, withholding resuscitative services, and foregoing or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.
• Make decisions regarding medical care.
• Request or refuse treatment to the extent permitted by law (you do not have the right to demand inappropriate or medically unnecessary treatment or services).
• Leave the hospital, even against the advice of physicians, to the extent permitted by law.
• Be advised if the hospital or your physician proposes to engage in or perform human experimentation affecting your care or treatment.
• Refuse to participate in any or all clinical research studies.
• Receive reasonable responses to any reasonable requests made for service.
• Request or reject the use of any or all methods used to relieve pain (including opiate medication if you suffer from severe chronic intractable pain).  Your doctor may refuse to prescribe the opiate medication, but if so, must inform you that there are physicians who specialize in the treatment of severe chronic intractable pain with methods that include the use of opiates.
• Reasonable continuity of care 
• To know, in advance, the time and location of appointments as well as the identity of the persons providing care.  

Know the Roles of Your Caregivers

Because of the level of specialty care provided at our hospital, you will receive attention from a number of different caregivers on our staff.  You have the right to know: 

• The name of the physician who has primary responsibility for your care.
• The names and responsibilities of other physicians and non-physicians who will provide care for you. 

Receive Health Information You Can Understand

As a patient of our hospital, you have the right to receive information about your health in terms that you can understand.  This includes information regarding: 

• Your health status
• The course of your treatment
• Your prospects for recovery
• Any proposed treatment or procedure you may need in order to give informed consent or to refuse a course of treatment (except in emergencies).  This information will include a description of the procedure or treatment, the medically significant risks involved, alternate courses of treatment or nontreatment, and the risks involved in each, and the name of the person who will carry out the procedure or treatment.
• Confidential treatment of information about your care and stay in the hospital (unless specifically prohibited in writing by you, basic information such as census data may be released to public health agencies).
• Written permission will be obtained before medical records are made available to anyone not directly concerned with your care, except as permitted by law.
• Access information contained in your records within a reasonable time frame, except as specified by law.
• Be informed by your physician, or a person chosen by your physician, of continuing healthcare requirements following discharge from the hospital.
• Know which hospital rules and policies apply to your conduct while a patient.
• Examine and receive an explanation of the hospital’s bill regardless of the source of payment.  

Maintain Control Over Decision-Making

In making decisions regarding your care, you have the right to:

• Formulate advance directives.
• Designate a decision-maker if you become incapable of understanding a proposed treatment or become unable to communicate your wishes regarding care.  All patient rights apply to the person who has legal responsibility to make decisions regarding medical care on your behalf.
• Expect hospital staff and practitioners who provide care in the hospital to comply with your wishes or those indicated by your designated decision-maker.  

Incorporate Family Members in Care and Receive Visitors

• Have a family member (or other person that you choose) notified immediately of your admission to the hospital.
• Designate visitors of your choosing, as long as you are allowed to have visitors (see guidelines for visitors).  
• 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). 
• Should Childrens Hospital determine 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 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.
• Have your wishes considered, if you lack decision making capacity, for the purposes of determining who may visit. The method of that consideration will be disclosed in the hospital policy on visitation. At a minimum, the hospital shall include any persons living in your household.

Have Respect Shown For Your Wishes

You have the right to have respect provided for:

• Your personal values and beliefs
• Have personal privacy respected (your treatment is confidential and should only be shared with the patient and his guardians)
• You have the right to be told the reason for any individual being in your room.
• Receive care in a safe setting, free from verbal or physical abuse or harassment.
• Access protective services including notifying government agencies of neglect or abuse.
• Be free from restraints and seclusion of any form used as a means of coercion, discipline, convenience, or retaliation by staff.
• File a grievance and/or file a complaint with the state Department of Health Services and/or the hospital and be informed of the action taken.

These Patient Rights incorporate the requirements of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations; Title 22, California Code of Regulations,Section 70707; and Medicare Conditions of Participation.  You may exercise these rights without regard to sex, economic status, educational background, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sexual orientation or marital status, or the source of payment for care.