As used in this article, the following terms have the following meanings:

(a) “Allowance for financially qualified patient” means, with respect to emergency care rendered to a financially qualified patient, an allowance that is applied after the emergency physician‘s charges are imposed on the patient, due to the patient’s determined financial inability to pay the charges.

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(b) “Emergency care” means emergency medical services and care, as defined in Section 1317.1, that is provided by an emergency physician in the emergency department of a hospital.

(c) “Emergency physician” means a physician and surgeon licensed pursuant to Chapter 5 (commencing with Section 2000) of Division 2 of the Business and Professions Code who is credentialed by a hospital and either employed or contracted by the hospital to provide emergency medical services in the emergency department of the hospital, except that an “emergency physician” shall not include a physician specialist who is called into the emergency department of a hospital or who is on staff or has privileges at the hospital outside of the emergency department.

(d) “Federal poverty level” means the poverty guidelines updated periodically in the Federal Register by the United States Department of Health and Human Services under authority of subsection (2) of Section 9902 of Title 42 of the United States Code.

(e) “Financially qualified patient” means a patient who is both of the following:

(1) A patient who is a self-pay patient or a patient with high medical costs.

(2) A patient who has a family income that does not exceed 350 percent of the federal poverty level.

(f) “Hospital” means a facility that is required to be licensed under subdivision (a) of Section 1250, except a facility operated by the State Department of State Hospitals or the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

(g) “Department” means the Department of Health Care Access and Information.

(h) “Self-pay patient” means a patient who does not have third-party coverage from a health insurer, health care service plan, Medicare, or Medicaid, and whose injury is not a compensable injury for purposes of workers’ compensation, automobile insurance, or other insurance as determined and documented by the emergency physician. Self-pay patients may include charity care patients.

(i) “A patient with high medical costs” means a person whose family income does not exceed 350 percent of the federal poverty level if that individual does not receive a discounted rate from the emergency physician as a result of their third-party coverage. For these purposes, “high medical costs” means any of the following:

(1) Annual out-of-pocket costs incurred by the individual at the hospital that provided emergency care that exceed 10 percent of the patient’s family income in the prior 12 months.

(2) Annual out-of-pocket expenses that exceed 10 percent of the patient’s family income, if the patient provides documentation of the patient’s medical expenses paid by the patient or the patient’s family in the prior 12 months. The emergency physician may waive the request for documentation.

(3) A lower level determined by the emergency physician in accordance with the emergency physician’s discounted payment policy.

(j) “Patient’s family” means the following:

(1) For persons 18 years of age and older, spouse, domestic partner, as defined in § 297 of the Family Code, and dependent children under 21 years of age, whether living at home or not.

(2) For persons under 18 years of age, parent, caretaker relatives, and other children under 21 years of age of the parent or caretaker relative.

(k) “Reasonable payment formula” means monthly payments that are not more than 10 percent of a patient’s family income for a month, excluding deductions for essential living expenses. “Essential living expenses” means, for purposes of this subdivision, expenses for all of the following: rent or house payment and maintenance, food and household supplies, utilities and telephone, clothing, medical and dental payments, insurance, school or child care, child or spousal support, transportation and auto expenses, including insurance, gas, and repairs, installment payments, laundry and cleaning, and other extraordinary expenses.

(Amended by Stats. 2021, Ch. 143, Sec. 85. (AB 133) Effective July 27, 2021.)