§ 74A.003.Applicability of Other Law

A savings provision, and its list of three is worth reading carefully.

The protections, immunities, and limitations of liability provided by this chapter are in addition to any other protections, immunities, and limitations of liability provided by other law.

Three different things are named, and they are not synonyms. A protection is the broadest category; an immunity stops the claim being brought or maintained; a limitation of liability permits the claim but caps or conditions what follows. The section preserves all three.

What sits alongside this chapter is substantial. A health care provider participating in a health information exchange is typically also a health care provider under the medical liability chapter — with its expert report requirement, its damages caps, and its limitations period — and none of that is displaced.

A governmental provider keeps the Tort Claims Act. Its damages cap and its notice requirement apply on top, and the medical liability chapter confirms separately that sovereign immunity is not waived.

Federal law is the other layer. HIPAA and the federal rules on electronic health information govern what may be exchanged and on what terms, and a state limitation of liability does not touch a federal obligation.

The direction is one-way. The section adds; it does not subtract. Nothing here removes a protection this chapter does not mention, and nothing gives this chapter’s protections priority over another.

The effect is that a defendant may rely on whichever protection is most favourable, and on all of them at once.