Patient Rights

Your Responsibilities

As a member of your Child's health care team your responsibilities are to:

  • Provide accurate and complete information about your child’s health.
  • Respect the rights of other patients and hospital personnel.
  • Provide information for processing hospital and physician bills (you are ultimately responsible for your child’s hospital expenses).
  • Follow the treatment plan recommended by medical personnel.

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.

Advance Directives

If you are 18 years or older and capable of making your own medical decision, you can make an Advance Directive (a plan for how your health care will be administered if you become too sick to make your own decisions).

  • When you complete an Advance Directive, you can choose a relative or a friend to make health care decisions for you. You can also say in advance what you want to happen if you can’t speak for yourself.

For more information, contact Social Work at 323-361-2485.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles believes that patients and families have rights and responsibilities based on the values of respect, service, excellence, knowledge and teamwork.

You have the right to:

  • Considerate and respectful care, and to be made comfortable. You have the right to respect for your personal values and beliefs.
  • Have a family member (or other representative of your choosing) and your own physician notified promptly of your admission to the hospital.
  • Know the name of the physician who has primary responsibility for coordinating your care, and the names and professional relationships of other physicians and non-physicians who will see you.
  • Receive information about your health status, course of treatment and prospects for recovery in terms you can understand. You have the right 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 hospital even against the advice of physicians, to the extent permitted by law.
  • Be advised if the hospital/personal physician 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.
  • Reasonable responses to any reasonable requests made for service.
  • 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 severe chronic intractable pain with methods that include the use of opiates.
  • Formulate advance directives. This includes designating a decision marker if you become incapable of understanding a proposed treatment or become unable to communicate your wishes regarding care. Hospital staff and practitioners who provide care in the hospital shall comply with these directives. All patient rights apply to the person who has legal responsibility to make decisions regarding medical care on your behalf.
  • 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.
  • Confidential treatment of all communications and records pertaining to your care and stay in the hospital. Basic information may be released to the public, unless specifically prohibited in writing by you. Written permission shall be obtained before medical records are made available to anyone not directly concerned with your care, except as otherwise may be required or permitted by law.
  • Access information contained in your records within a reasonable time frame, except in certain circumstances specified by law.
  • Receive care in a safe setting, free from verbal or physical abuse or harassment. You have the right to 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.
  • 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.
  • Be informed by the physician, or a delegate of the physician, of continuing health care requirements following discharge from the hospital.
  • Know which hospital rules and policies apply to your conduct while a patient.
  • 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 or 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 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 and any support person.
  • Examine and receive an explanation of the hospital’s bill regardless of the source of payment.
  • Exercise these rights without regard to sex, economic status, educational background, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, disability, medical condition, marital status, registered domestic partner status, or the source of payment for care.
  • 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. Contact the Office of Patient Experience at 323-361-4682 or the Department of Health Services at 800-228-1019.

End of Life Options

For patients of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles facing a terminal diagnosis, the hospital maintains strong relationships with palliative and hospice providers and does not support the prescription or administration of aid-in-dying medication on its premises. If a patient wishes to receive aid-in-dying drugs while receiving care at CHLA, providers will assist in a smooth transfer to another facility of the patient's choice while assuring continuity of care.