Colorado § 25-58-102 - Legislative declaration.

§ 25-58-102. Legislative declaration.

(1) The general assembly hereby finds and declares that:

(a) The right of every patient to receive basic information necessary to give full and informed consent is a fundamental tenet of good public health policy and has long been the established law of this state;

(b) Every person having ultimate responsibility for decisions respecting the person's own health care also possesses a concomitant right of access to complete information respecting the person's condition and available care;

(c) For nonmedical reasons, some health-care facilities do not provide a full range of health-care services and may prohibit, significantly restrict, or otherwise refuse to provide services such as sterilization, infertility treatments, abortion, end-of-life health-care services, or contraceptive services, including emergency contraception;

(d) Health-care facilities may also deny or selectively restrict care relating to stigmatized populations, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals, for nonmedical reasons even if equivalent procedures are provided for other patients;

(e) Persons seeking health care frequently lack information about which facilities refuse to provide various health-care services for nonmedical reasons and which services they refuse to provide;

(f) Patients are not well positioned to understand what treatment options are available to them when health-care facilities do not disclose which treatment options they refuse to provide for nonmedical reasons;

(g) Consequently, when health-care facilities do not disclose that they restrict or refuse to provide various health-care services for nonmedical reasons, they can deprive patients of a knowledgeable choice as to alternative treatments, which is inconsistent with the underlying principle of informed consent;

(h) Refusal to provide health-care services for nonmedical reasons may:

(I) Have long-term negative consequences, resulting in injury, disability, and death;

(II) Cause trauma to patients;

(III) Impact quality of life; and

(IV) Result in greater health-care expenses for patients and payers; and

(i) Some denials of care violate state and federal law.

(2) Therefore, it is the intent of the general assembly to help ensure that patients are given full and complete information about the health-care services available to them so that they can make well-informed health-care decisions.

Source: L. 2023: Entire article added, (HB 23-1218), ch. 155, p. 663, § 1, effective August 7.