Health Committee Approves Winter & Jaquez Lewis Bill to Ensure Patient Consent Protections for Intimate Exams

HB23-1077 would require licensed health care facilities to obtain a patient-signed consent form before intimate examinations are performed

DENVER, CO – Today the Senate Health and Human Services Committee approved Senators Faith Winter, D-Westminster, and Sonya Jaquez Lewis’, D-Longmont, bill to enact patient consent protections for intimate exams.

HB23-1077 would require health care professionals, students, medical residents and trainees to obtain informed consent from patients before performing intimate examinations, unless in emergency situations. In addition to consent, health care professionals would only be able to perform intimate examinations if it is pertinent to the planned procedure.

“Patients deserve dignity,” Winter said. “Right now, health care professionals jeopardize that by performing unauthorized intimate exams on patients. By requiring health care professionals to obtain consent from their patients before intimate exams are conducted, we’re ensuring patients are able to maintain control over their bodies, and maintain their dignity.”

“Creating patient consent protections for intimate exams is simply the right thing to do,” said Jaquez Lewis. “This important bill will ensure patients who have been put under anesthesia or who are unconscious during medical procedures aren’t unknowing or unwilling recipients of intimate exams.”

Across the country, medical students and residents are instructed to perform unauthorized intimate exams, including pelvic exams for educational purposes, on patients under medical sedation for unrelated surgeries. Patients are not able to consent to these procedures and can experience extreme physical and behavioral responses from the trauma of learning about this exam after it has happened.

HB23-1077 now heads to the Appropriations Committee. You can follow the bill’s progress HERE.