Opinion ID: 1591402
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Standard of Care for Patients with Mental Impairments

Text: ¶ 8. A state facility providing mental health care is statutorily mandated to provide proper care and treatment, best adapted, according to contemporary professional standards. Miss.Code Ann. § 41-21-102 (Rev.2005). Neither the Legislature nor Mississippi courts have defined contemporary professional standards, but, in dicta, this Court, speaking through the learned Presiding Justice Banks, commented, [p]ersons deemed incapable of making rational judgments, such that they must be committed, are not to be protected by a lesser standard than reasonable care under the circumstances. Carrington v. Methodist Med. Ctr., Inc., 740 So.2d 827, 829-30 (Miss.1999). In Texas, [a] hospital is under a duty to exercise reasonable care to safeguard the patient from any known or reasonably apprehensible danger from herself and to exercise such reasonable care for her safety as her mental and physical condition, if known, may require. Mounts v. St. David's Pavilion, 957 S.W.2d 661, 663 (Tex.Ct.App.1997). [6] ¶ 9. The Texas standard of care for the duty a hospital owes to a patient is similar to what we enunciated in Carrington. It is flexible in that the duty owed to patients may increase depending on the physical or mental condition of the patient. It can therefore be applied to different fact situations. We therefore adopt the Texas standard of care.