§ 79.0031.Liability of Volunteer Health Care Provider or Health Care Institution

A disaster provision specific to health care, and it is broader than the general one in a key respect.

"Volunteer health care provider" takes its meaning from the charitable immunity chapter — the thirteen licensed professions, each including retired practitioners — and the term includes an individual who is not affiliated with a charitable organization.

That inclusion is the widening. The charitable immunity chapter protects a volunteer of a charitable organization. This reaches an unaffiliated clinician who turns up.

Except in the case of reckless conduct or intentional, wilful, or wanton misconduct, such a provider is immune from civil liability for care, assistance, or advice given in relation to a man-made or natural disaster endangering individuals, property, or the environment, and within the scope of the provider's practice under the laws of this state.

No request is required here, unlike the general disaster provision. A physician who arrives on their own initiative is protected.

Subsection (c) protects the institution. A health care institution is immune for the acts of a volunteer provider working at its facility or under its direction, if the provider is immune and the institution does not have an expectation of compensation from or for the patient beyond reimbursement of its expenses.

A hospital taking in volunteer clinicians during a disaster is not made liable for them by accepting the help.