§ 74.001.Definitions

Twenty-five definitions, and one of them is the gateway to the entire chapter.

"Health care liability claim" means a cause of action against a health care provider or physician for treatment, lack of treatment, or other claimed departure from accepted standards of medical care, or health care, or safety or professional or administrative services directly related to health care, which proximately results in injury or death — whether the claim sounds in tort or contract.

The last clause forecloses the obvious workaround. A claimant cannot escape the expert report, the caps, and the notice requirement by pleading breach of contract or ordinary premises liability instead of negligence. If the substance is a departure from health care standards, the chapter applies.

The word "safety" is what makes the definition reach beyond treatment itself, and it is the recurring battleground — whether a fall in a hospital corridor, or an injury from equipment, is a health care liability claim or an ordinary one.

Two exclusions are stated: claims under Labor Code Sections 406.033(a) and 408.001(b) against an employer by an employee or their survivor.

"Health care provider" is broad — any person or institution licensed by Texas to provide health care, including registered nurses, dentists, podiatrists, pharmacists, chiropractors, optometrists, and health care institutions. It also expressly includes officers, directors, shareholders, partners, owners, and affiliates of a provider or physician, and employees, independent contractors, and agents acting in the course and scope of the relationship.

"Health care institution" lists eleven categories, including ambulatory surgical centres, assisted living facilities, hospices, hospitals, hospital systems, and nursing homes. The distinction between an institution and a non-institutional provider matters because the noneconomic damages caps apply to each separately.

"Claimant" collapses a family into one. All persons claiming damages from the bodily injury or death of a single person are considered a single claimant — which is what keeps the per-claimant caps from multiplying across surviving relatives.

"Emergency medical care" ends where stabilisation begins: the term does not include care after the patient is stabilized and capable of being treated as a nonemergency patient, or care unrelated to the original emergency.